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

Matt wrote: 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.

Matt wrote: 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.

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

Pale Fire wrote: I 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.

Le Joueur wrote:
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.

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)

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?"

Without creating the "conspiracy of vampires", have you come up with any ideas as to how multiple vampires meet each other, and why they hang out?

Or, if you want to make an interesting departure from the norm, make playing normal people an option as well, so now players can play the role of friends, lovers, and family trying to deal with their special friend.
If you want to really nail it to players, you could make the rules for temptation(of feeding) stronger the more you care about a person...

Is there any sort of groups that know about them? Or whacked out groups who don't really know, but figure the vampires are cultists, cannibals, devil worshippers, etc?

Just some thoughts,
Chris

Yeah yeah go ahead and ignore my ideas! You know nothing I mean nothing anyway! *grumpy* *grumpy* :) :) :)

I think, for the time being ignore VtM. It hasn't really anything to do about vampires. You could put aliens instead of vampires in it and it would work the same.

The only reason [super rant mode on] they made up the conspiracy and cabal thing was because they want to rape the myths. I was confused when I read Vampire, suspecting something when I read Werewolf and totally certain when I got to Changeling. WW is to mythology what Pentex is to nature[/super rant mode off]

It's not that VtM can't give enjoyable play. In fact one of my most enjoyable role playing moments was playing a malkavian girl in an adventure at a Con. For that particular character all the stuff with archetypes and such clicked together and gave me what in my hands was an unbeatably fun character to play.

But that has nothing whatsoever to do with VtM having being a good Vampire rpg or not. In fact I think it has little to do about vampires. It's more politics.

I guess like Matt says, VtM is popular because it doesn't require people to think about what they're actually playing, because they can simply play the vampires as superpowered humans bickering about stuff.

If you actually want to address the interesting things, like "how does it feel to be a vampire" then you will make it less accesible to the mindless drones out there.

The kicker variant Ben Morgan brings up is a good point. Something like that would help a lot. I guess Jake is already on to that though.

Fang wrote: 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.

Character: highly-internalized, character-experiential play, for instance the Turku approach.
A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Character Exploration might be, What does it feel like to be a vampire?

Situation: well-defined character roles and tasks, up to and including metaplot-driven play.
A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Situation Exploration might be, What does the vampire lord require me to do?

Hey Jake,

Like where you're going...

Jake Norwood wrote: 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?

Hey Christoffer,

Pale Fire wrote: I can't see any exploration of situation in my adventures. If you can, then maybe my examples are simply unclear.

Pale Fire wrote: A classic type of campaign would be:
"If the rules of human life were 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.

Pale Fire also wrote: Look here:

Character: highly-internalized, character-experiential play, for instance the Turku approach.

A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Character Exploration might be, What does it feel like to be a vampire?


Situation: well-defined character roles and tasks, up to and including metaplot-driven play.

A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Situation Exploration might be, What does the vampire lord require me to do?

Pale Fire wrote: "If the rules of human life were suddenly ripped..."

"...you drift from place to place...."

"...fit into human society...".

...positions of power.

Wow, I'm getting really good feedback here, and I appreciate it a lot.

Roaming and being normal: Being raised military, I'm kind of a drifter (hense the company name). For me part of the allure of vampires was the fact that they were people who had lost/rejected what was "home" and became drifters and outsiders--if not physcially, at least then emotionally. I think that's what drew me to V:tM originally all those years ago.

Blood Points and Powers: Again, BPs don't create powers, but they fuel them. To me instead of being a way to "limit" what a vampire can do, it's a way of making feeding a choice: "If I don't use my amazing power I will rarely if ever have to take human life" vs. "Look at all the power I have...the price isn't so bad, is it?" When feeding, the number of BPs in a human is based largely on items like Gender, Health, Age, and "Purity." This makes the most desirable targets also the ones with the most "reason to live." Sure, you can hunt old ladies and criminals, but they don't provide so much life to you, and they can't fuel your expensive addiction. I think what I'm saying is that Blood isn't the Addiction--Power is, and Power comes through the taking of Blood. If you want the power then you make an evil choice. That's strong to me.

Flashbacks: In the Playtest we're running right now the game takes place in Victorian England. I'm planning the next game to be modern somewhere, and the next could be the Revolutionary war. For this reason I'm considering having essentially no advancement system. This is a mixed bag for me, though, as part of the power of the Genre isn't being ancient, but discovering that you have great power and that one day, you will be ancient. So vanilla games can exist in any time period.

Relationships (why does the group stick together?): In our current group, we've got a straight line of decendancy. One player--a vampire since ancient Greece, created the next, who in turn created the next, and then the next, and so on, so that every vampire in the group is a parent (except the last) and a child (except the first) of someone else in the group. This is a little more linear than I had in mind, but I think that there should be a literal blood-relationship (vampiric kinship, not neccessarily mortal kinship) between players. So far I like the way it's working, but I will want to play with it more. Personally I can't see any plausible reason for vampires to hang together in a group larger than three without "family ties" or some kind of quest to conquer the world through conspiricy.

Premise: I confess that the premise I had in mind is actually *very* Sorcerer-esque. What will you do (who will you kill) to get what you want. Originally I was just going to use Clinton's URGE mod for Sorcerer for vampires, but then I decided that I wanted something a little more and we started doing our thing (not that I don't still think that Sorcerer would make and awesome vampire game...it would!). This seems to be a recurring thing in all the vampire myths. Veeerrrry Sorcerer-esque indeed.

Hey Jake, like how you're tieing the expenditure of blood points to powers only if you really call upon them.

My all time favorite take on vampires was the TV show Forever Knight, which kept all of the vampire conspiracy stuff very real, but very personal. Instead of the huge sweeping cabals, the conspiracies that affected Knight were all immediate Relationship Map type conspiracies. It also highlighted the importance of relationships with mortals, both those who know your secret and those that don't.

Further the show really highlighted (to the extent possible in serial TV) the quest by Knight to hang on to his humanity, continueing to try to function within human society and living on blood bank blood instead of hunting. Inevitably he was faced with situations where to save people it became necessary to get all vampire bad ass. This not only required more blood (and an occassional frenzy inspired hunt to get it) but also set him back on the humanity / beast line.

A really good across-the-ages vampire game would be great. Figure its just you and the other six vampires you've known since 1403... occasionaly you meet new ones. IN all that time, in such a tight peer group, everyone has the chance to play all the possible rolls in relationships... one century the Enemy, the next the Lover, the next Confidant, the next, Friend, the next Betrayer etc. With such a small incestuous group of potential friends, imagine all the possible permutations a relationship map might take?

In such a scheme, it has to be fairly difficult for a vampire to create another vampire.

In one of my projects- a vamp game called Blood Oaths- it requires a whole coven of vampires to initiate a new member... vamps who go at it alone quickly fall into the stolid, manipulative, arrogant, 'count in the castle' mode... and fairly soon after that get slaughtered by their wilder, more dynamic and younger kin. A vampire game about revolution and rebirth and the dynamics of a tightly interbound yet highly volitile social group.


Don't ignore the social... the only consistent presences in the life of a potentialy immortal being are going to be others with a similar life span... and if quite rare, this can mean the same crew of blokes you've known...forever...




Aslo there was a really great thread a goodly while back about a naritivist aproach to Vampires, and it may be well worth searching for to review.

Blood points. Damn I'm gonna fight you on this one Jake. I know you meant it as powering them (actually being the source of new powers would be totally in line with litterature).

Pale Fire wrote: I personally think blood fueling powers is a very very bad idea. To me it sounds like an arbitrary rule to stop the characters from being too powerful.

Blood Points and k3w1 Powerz

Been thinking on this a bit. All I can offer is how I would do this were I making such a beast. Heck, I may do that at some point if I continue to dwell on this.

Having powers work off of blood points is functional and it's nice to have a mechanical reinforcement for why vampires must drink blood. I can't help but think that it's also artificial. I'm not saying that it would, but one could imagine someone playing munchkin style, killing without discretion just to get the blood points. This is always the danger with mechanics IMO. There is always the possibility of someone playing the letter of the rules instead of the spirit of the game.

I would focus more on the characters themselves, which is the vampires and their victems, as I had said before. I'm trying not to repeat myself. It just seems more interesting to me, I guess.

I don't think I'm illustrating this well, I'll try again.

Couple things I don't really like:

The idea of needing blood points to power the vampire's powers or needing to feed at lest ever three months or similar deadlines. Focus on such things seem beside the point to me. The point IMO is the chase as the vampire stalks, seduces and eventually feeds on the one they have chosen. Just as important are all of the elements that relate to this, such as why the vampire has chosen this particular person and watching the interaction between them through play.

I guess part of it in my mind is that the vampire isn't just after the victem's blood but is looking for emotional, spiritual surrender. Maybe I've been reading too many bdsm stories.

I don't like the stuff above about blood points because that adds a level to the proceedings I wouldn't want. What if the vampire is twarted for three months? Then a sense of urgency is placed on the proceedings or else the character may starve to death. I don't think that's in line with the spirit of things. The vampire always manages to come back. Lop its head off and set it on fire and it still returns later to haunt you. It strikes me that this is one of those concepts where character death is better decided by player choice than as the results of system mechanics.

But then, I don't seem to have much in mind for mechanics other than maybe a generic task resolution

The idea of Regret sounds interesting. I'll have to think on that. However, it's now become painfully obvious that I'm working on my own take of the same thing at this point.

Pity you've already taken the title Thirst. That's a good title.

Much is made of vampire thirst being somehow extraordinary... that a vampire's hunger is so much greater than a human's, so much more powerful and driving and insidious.

Go a week without eating, and tell me how powerful you think entirely human hunger is.

I get cranky if I have to skip lunch and my blood sugar drops. I get happy when I tuck into an especially excellent bowl of Mongolian noodles.

The entirely mundane human is almost entirely ruled and defined by his appetites, either in giving into them or in resisting them.

Don't go the blood pool route. Its tired. I don't have "Big Mac points" or "almond trout points" that I burn for using MY natural powers of walking about, yakking, and typing slightly snide answers in message forums. Though a good case could be made that I actually run on Coffee Points. I'd like to see a game which treats vampire powers as a new set of natural abilities... with no two vampires having quite the same 'spread' of power potentials. Vamp 1 can read minds. Vamp 2 can fly. Vamp 3 can walk in dreams. Vamp 4 can eat thoughts instead of blood.

Using a normal power is about as exhausting (and hunger-inducing) as walking around. Using a significant power is like running. Using a major power is like sprinting as hard as you can. You'll get tired, and then hungrier.

Take another route. The 'kewl powerzs' are like a tiger's great strength, claws, and senses- they allow a tiger to do what a tiger does much much better: kill and eat.

The dangerous difference in human and vampire hunger is not its inherent power or seductive attraction, but that a human frantic for a meal is going to be pretty weak and frail...while a vamp is going to be dangerously strong and fast... imagine after that week of fasting if someone starts waving a plate of hot French fries under your nose? After two weeks? Now imagine those hot fresh steamy French fries are your coworkers.

Remember the cartoons with the two characters trapped on the desert island and each starts to hallucinate that the other guy is a big Sunday ham? Something like that.

-Benjamin

Dammit! Two people, one before, one after my post have addressed the blood points/powers issue much better than I did. Ignore me, read their posts.

The vampiric condition is a mirror image of the human condition, only dialed up a few notches and dipped in neon. Therefore I think it very appropriate for the fulfillment of a vampire's hunger to ease the barriers inherent to feeding that hunger the next time around. Hate begets hate, violence and repeated exposure to violence often result in an indifference and numbeness to it, making it easier to accept or perpetrate on the next go-round. This applies to our exposure to most things to some degree, from sex to food.

I could jive with the BloodPoints fueling powers if those powers are direct extensions of a vampire's lust and pain. Highlighting the vampire's position as a walking dichotomy representing the the relationship between desire and guilt should be the primo goal in my opinion. I think that the mechanical balance between bestiality and humanity is a start, but it doesn't quite knock the ball outta da park. I think some good ideas on handling dual natures are being presented in the Let's Make a Game thread over in Theory, concerning monastic orders.

Sorry I can't be of more help. There's an idea out there floating in the void between my eyes, but I just can't quite get a grasp on it.

-Chris

Two unrelated opinions:

a. Up to the point of collapse, a hungry vampire should be able to beat the crap out of a full one. Blood points should give you restraint, compassion, coolness, foresight, and conscience. Being hungry should give you powers. I'd vote for 'truly nasty' over 'kewl.'

You feed because you're worse if you don't. (I think I've heard that somewhere before.)

b. What would you do for power? is a stupid Premise for a vampire game. I'd drink people's blood. Duh.

Jake, you seem to be angling toward Whose blood would you drink for power? which is better, but still. How about: What would you drink people's blood for?

Edit: Edited so I sound somewhat less the sarcastic, strident nutjob.

-Vincent

Okay, so you guys are anti-blood points. The arguments:

1) Blood Points originated within the WW mythos; in non-rpg terms, the idea is that blood fuels a vampire's powers comes from WW.

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.

Likewise, the argument is a little like saying "D&D uses dice and I don't like D&D, so no dice." Some people actually are in a camp like this, but that isn't most of us.

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. So while I don't think the concept backing something like Blood Points goes back to Dracula, it is attested in more modern literature.

2) Blood banks and stuff are cheating.

Couldn't agree more. You've got to take it from someone. As to "is blood needed for survival?" Yeah, sure, but not much and not often. I'm fine with that, because the game is about people either (1) trying to live in a vampire's world without crossing that line, or (2) about people that are addicted to power and cross the line to feed that addiction.

Blood points as I'm using them do this. I'm willing to drop them IF I see a viable reason other than "its too much like WW."

3) Blood Points will lead to munchkin behavior.
And munchkin behavior is what? Killing everyone to get what you want. This is a *great* thing to make a story out of when you put the rest of the mechanics (Passion and Regret as I mentioned earlier, amongst other things). It's not really any more munchkin-like than Sorcerer, where you can summon as many demons as you like, but can you handle all that power. With THIRST it'a an issue of those Vices and Virtues (the Pendragon-like stuff); those are what will really drive the game.

4) Blood points take away the emotional impact of the hunt and the fun stuff that could go with it.

This is the best argument so far, and the only one that's starting to sway me. While originally I'm not so sure that this is what I was going for, its certainly a *fascinating* part of the genre, and should be handled well. The problem as I see it (partially at least) is the fear of making it a stalking game and not a game that is about all the great emotional stuff AND all the cool powers. Vampires do cool stuff, and the Simulationist in me wants to do cool stuff vicariously through my character. I also think that the stalk may be a little over melodramatic as you're seeing it (melodramatic compared to my vision, that is). I think you can just kill and eat and treat them (humans) like cattle. Fine. I think that vampires are lonely and that's where the stalking comes from. Dracula did what he did (stalk Mina) out of love and a search for a companion, not for food. He used others for that.

Finally, I don't see blood as food a la "Big Mac Points," although if I did those arguments would be quite valid. Blood is Power. How badly do you want that power?

Jake

lumpley wrote: b. What would you do for power? is a stupid Premise for a vampire game. I'd drink people's blood. Duh.

Jake, you seem to be angling toward Whose blood would you drink for power? which is better, but still. How about: What would you drink people's blood for?

Edit: Edited so I sound somewhat less the sarcastic, strident nutjob.

-Vincent

I see a vampire version of "Friends" were eveyone bums around, dates each other, and has the occasional zany adventure. Only instead of 7 seasons, it covers like 7 hundred years.



One thing I did in Blood Oaths is to tie a vampire's personal Resolve into his will to continue living... Resolve represented the things which tied a vampire to life, what kept him going, intrested, and motivated. When you were all out of Resolve, you just couldn't give a crap to do much of anything- no motivation.

Esentialy, a character does what ever they want to with the power they grab... motivation should be an intigral part of the character. Loose it, and you get a case of the Lestat mopes.

Yeah, I'm sorry about the tone. 'Duh' is funnier when I say it in real life.

For my vampire game (uh let's see: Hungry Desperate and Alone), I said: vampirism means violence in relationships. What would you hurt your lover for? And all the reasons I could come up with were bad, which suited me.

Like Chris said, vampires are people writ large. What does vampirism mean to you? Is it um murder? Is it rape? Is it drug addiction? Unsafe sex? Blasphemy? Mugging people in an alley and taking their wallets? Eating meat?

Why would people do those things?

-Vincent

Hmm. It seems that a lot of the focus is getting shifted onto the "I've got cool powers but we need game balance" issue.

I don't know how far you'd be willing to go with this, Jake, but it seems the issue is less about what cool powers someone has, or what they can do with them, but what would they use it for. I'd say skip making detailed powers rules and do something along the lines of Panels or Trollbabe, where what the powers are and what they do is less important, and what you're using them for is the focus.

I mean, the point of a vampire is that you have to drink blood, so who would you decide to take? Crooks, scum, abusers? Losers and people without any future? The terminally ill? The spoiled pretty people who think they're immortal?

Who and why?

Chris

Regarding Lumpley's point about blood being a source of self-control, stillness, peace:

I can see this as a really interesting centre for a game, but with the replacement of atrocity for blood.

Basically, the blood-drinking is only a highly ritualized way of appeasing something else - the vampire's terrible, insatiable hunger for horror. Whenever the vampire does something that horrifies and disgusts (as the drinking of blood should) the rational, human part of him, it calms the beast within.

Perhaps as the beast gets hungrier, it gives the vampire access to less controllable powers: inhuman strength, weird stamina, rapid healing...
...but when the beast is controlled, the vampire has access to difficult, contemplative abilities: the shifting of forms, invisibility, clairvoyance, and the like.

Then, the game have this undercurrent of balancing mind and beast for maximum effectiveness, which may or may not be toward your goal.

four willows weeping


That scheme is neeto. Quite cool.

I think it would be possible to make a pretty good, interesting Christian-religious vampire game, where vampirism is a metaphor for 'all fall short in the eyes of God.' One prob you'd run into is, can vampires be redeemed? Do the mechanics redeem? Does the GM? I haven't been thinking about it for very long, but it seems like a mean prob to take on.

Jake, your Regret stat hooks right into that problem. What good is regret if redemption is impossible?

Vampires are tough to make into protagonists. Because they've already made their bed, if you see. You have to work hard to find meaningful choices for them to make.

-Vincent

There's one element of some vampire mythology that's kind of in the background, never stated outright as a rule, but that's often adhered to for dramatic or thematic reasons. Put it in the game system, and the whole dynamic changes.

Only blood given willingly sustains a vampire.

Clears the whole run of the mill hunt-by-night routine right off the table. (And why not? Here's our vampire: night vision, superhuman strength, stealth, mind control, and centuries of experience. Good thing he has all those powers, because by night he must stalk and kill... what? A prostitute? A rent-a-cop night watchman? Some kid strung out on Ecstasy who wandered out of a rave?)

What's missing in a lot of Vampire scenarios is the evil. In V:tM you can lose your Humanity and become a beast. But beasts out for blood aren't evil; they're just dangerous, like mosquitos or sharks. And the balance to fend off beast-ness isn't particularly difficult except when the game system starts dictating your behavior with frenzies and such. (Involuntary violence: dangerous, not evil.) Otherwise it's easy: you do some harm, you do some good. Why not just get used to it, especially if you're planning to live forever?

Vampires who must seduce, deceive, or bargain for their meals face a distinctly different, and possibly sharper, moral dilemma simply because they cannot fall into the role of mere predators. Especially if the feeding must kill. Think about what it might take to get a person to accept an offer that includes taking his life.

- Walt

I think we're getting there.

First, people should quit atacking Jake's mechanics. They're not at issue. Once the real issue (why does a vampire drink blood?) is resolved, then we can look at whether or not the mechanics work.

So, to address that, Jake did you read Vincent's game (HDA)? He has one reasonable answer to the question. Even if you do not agree with Vincent's interperetation, it may give you an inspiration.

The biggest problem of all is simply protagonization. Why does WW go the way it does? Because supernatural superheroes are cool. If you make the game solely about the nastiness of being a vampire, then aren't the characters either antagonists, or just depressing? Whatever you decide, the action that the game is about must be something that makes the characters into people that the players can like in some way. usually the only likable thing about vampires is their power. What else can we put in?

An obvious choice is to make it posssible for a vampire to redeem himself. Then play becomes about the GM providing obstacles to the character achieving that redemption. Temptations to slide back away from humanity.

The other obvious choice is one that I think that you reject already. That is the Vampire Good Guy ala Angel or Knight. But you can see how this automatically provides protagonizing conflict for a vampire character.

I think most other options are some sort of more subtle versions of these. They all look at what humanity the vampire has left, and whether he can cling to it. Or whether he falls into beastial action. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the stated Narrativist Premise of Vampire:TM has it exaclty right. The mechanics simply do not back it up. Imagine Vampire if the rules were stripped down to just the Humanity rules, and the Blood pool. Character with more blood wins against the one with less in any conflict, and Vampires always beat mortals. Suddenly it all works. More or less.

Is that the sort of thing you want?

The fact of the matter is that the source material only gives you a little to work with. Vampires kill people for blood, they fall for them, and they are subject to the limitations and advantages of their state. All else is soap opera. You may have to invent something for them to be in conflict with. Space Vampires from Mars trying to take over? It's possible that there's no satisfactory solution to the problem. Why do you want to play vampires?

You mention certain other things that are problematic, Jake. First, the vampires wander. This is, of course at odds with their interplay. One way to deal with this is to say that all play is a representation of the times that vampires meet. This would be very Anne Rice. As soon as a vampire is by himslef, his narration ends, and the next thing the players do is figure out when the next time is that they will meet.

Idea: the players represent all the vampires that exist. Or they think they are. This gives them a very strong reason to come together. Who else to comiserate with? Who else will understand what they are going through? Who else is worth impressing? Make mortal characters relatively faint.

Just brainstorming.

Mike

Jake Norwood wrote: Okay, so you guys are anti-blood points....

...You've got to take it from someone. As to "is blood needed for survival?" Yeah, sure, but not much and not often. I'm fine with that, because the game is about people either (1) trying to live in a vampire's world without crossing that line, or (2) about people that are addicted to power and cross the line to feed that addiction.

Blood points as I'm using them do this. I'm willing to drop them IF I see a viable reason other than "its too much like WW."

First off,

Mike-
Thanks for re-directing things there. I was starting to feel like instead of "lets help Jake create the game he wants" it became "lets make Jake's game like the one we want," which is fair as criticism from an audience, but wasn't helping my dilemma (not that the discussion didn't give me lots to chew on and think about, because it did). And yes, I read Vincent's game. There were some excellent ideas in there.

Fang-
The taking of life is really the issue here. Blood Points aren't actual volumes of blood, but rather quality of blood, because the person you took it from has more "life" in them than another person. You're a theif, and to fuel your addiction to power you steal life, which is the currency with which you buy your power.

So to me the questin "why does a vampire drink blood" is an issue of paying for their addiction--just as a game about junkies might feature a section on stealing to pay for the smack.

Redemption is a big issue for the game. Let me explain the Regret mechanic a bit. I'm still working this one out (all I know is that when it's done, it'll rock the house...but I'm not there yet). Basically when you go against your pre-set patterns (as exemplified in the "Passions," those Pendragon-esque trait pairs) you accrue Regret (and you come closer to the other side of the scale). Thus greedy individual who is always greedy will not incur any Regret (although consequences may arise through actions regardless); alternately, if you're a Temperate individual and you lose control, you incur Regret. Regret causes problems. That's as far as I know solidly.

Not so solidly I've got a few approaches, but am satisfied with none.
1) Regret is accumulated in points which somehow hinder your character in other ways. The only way to remove these points is through Atonement.
2) Regret causes an event or backlash to you action that would act much like a kicker. If resolved well then you atone. If not, then...I dunno.
3) Regret leads directly to your destruction, leading up to an endgame of sorts unless atoned for. Thus in order to keep your vampire from perishing you must resist incurring or continually atone for your Regret, which is probably a collection of points. Thus the only way a vampire really dies is by being the author of its own death via Regret.

The Regret mechanic--and the following Atonement--might really be the thing I'm looking for to bail me out, here. 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.

I'm not against a vampire trying to fix his sordid past like Angel or (ack) Blade. However I wouldn't want the game to make that decision for a player. The player is presented with the issue of "do I amass power and regret until I am burned up by my own decisions?" or "can I repair what I've done allready?" But making these things apparent the the players, and having them want to make such a decision, is very difficult (which may be why all the consipracies in WW--it's easier).

Jake

On the whole "wanting to drink the blood of people you love more than others" note, the reason for this could be that the more you love the person in question, the closer you want to get to them. When you drink their blood, their memories could infuse you for a period of time, or perhaps that person's personality would live on inside you for a while (or forever, I dunno). Obviously, that's just one example. The idea is that the more you love them, the closer you want to get to them, and the closest you can get to them is to kill them by drinking their blood. Indeed, I think that one of the major reasons people have sex is so they can get close to someone they love. Of course, I'm just rambling here, so listen to me at your own peril (a bit of a late warning, oh well).

Jake,

On my end, I agree with the folks who ask "What do vampires represent?" Most monsters in folklore are a perversion of some human behavior or an embodiment of some evil, much as the bogey-hag Jenny Greenteeth gave a name and identity to the tragedy of children drowning in ponds or creeks. I think once you decide what facet of human behavior you want to explore using vampires as a metaphor, you'll find the rest comes together easily.

WW's position is that the Vampire as a trope represents sex, passion, and sensuality, that monsters are dark reflections of ourselves. Symbolically, the Vampire blends seduction and rape. Of course, there's also the immortality idea, in which case Vampires are basically blood-drinking nocturnal immortals with cool powers.

If I were you, I'd lean toward trying to do something new, something other than the Night Life Vampire Illuminati Goth trip.

That. Has. Been. Done.

That's my feeling with Blood Points, too. Mechanically it may be sound, but it's too evocative of the Other Game, and (here's my other reason), Blood Points thematically reinforces Blood as a resource rather than a Need. At least make it a variable stat, not an expendable Pool. You might also consider that the emotions of the victim at the time the vampire takes the blood limits what supernatural abilities are available to the vampire, not unlike Vincent's suggestion. Alternatively, consider inverting it to a Hunger Pool that ingestion of Blood lowers.

But all this is useless without knowing more about what you want Vampires to do.

Wanna explore Hunger? Make Hunger a living trait. Aspect it so you get more Sustenance out of people you love. Give your friends and family some kind of game important rating so that you're torn between satisfying Hunger and keeping your Friends and Lovers and Family alive. Maybe pit Hunger v. Satiety as opposed traits. Or if you want the Humanity riff, have your Loved Ones represent your Humanity directly.

Wanna explore Immortality? Set up flashback sequences and check-offs a la Trollbabe. Create precious Memories that Hunger threatens. Try era-specific skills and experiences a la Nephilim. Make Ennui the real "Health Level" stat, except that the more Ennui you accumulate, the closer you are to taking the final stroll in the sunlight.

Wanna explore the Hunt? Inject a Notoriety rating. The higher your Notoriety, the more hunters know about you, as it acts as a bonus to their lore rolls, investigation, fervor, etc. You may have to lie low for a few decades to lower Notoriety. Then set things up with a Passion Need the vampire must fulfill, something like a spiritual attribute that will risk raising Notoriety. Include Minions the Vampire players can run.

Working title is "Thirst," eh? Thirst for what? (And I don't mean Blood). However, that minds me of another reason why I wouldn't use Blood Points. You want your Vampires to want something more metaphysical than mere blood, right? They want passion, violence, terror, something more. That's why human blood is so much more satisfying than animal blood, right? Hard to get much passion out of guzzling a cow. Figure out what Blood represents in your game. What does it stand in for? THAT is what Thirst aims at, in my opinion.

Just some ideas, but there have been several vampire or vampire-ish games, none of them particularly innovative after the first Masquerade. SAs are such a great, great element. Don't drop them into a Storyteller clone.

Best,

Blake

Um, okay, if I'm not being clear, tell me, but:

Thirst is the addiction to power. That's what's going on here. You guys are ignoring that largely. I'm not asking for "what is a vampire" or anything else. I came to the table telling you what I was trying to do, and that's being passed over. The vampire to me represents people that are addicted to something and push forward this addiction at the cost of others. They are theives.

As to a "storyteller clone..." I.don't.give.a.crap.about.Storyteller.anymore.
I WANT blood to be a rescource. If you don't, that's fine, but do it that way in your game.

I have gotten tons of fantastic feedback from this thread, but it's starting to beat a dead horse, and I don't think anyone is really reading my posts beyond "I have a vampire game and it has Blood Points" anymore.

Make sense?

Jake

ps Sorry if my tone came across harshly. I'm in a hurry and I cranked this post out really fast.

Jake Norwood wrote: I WANT blood to be a rescource.

Jake,

Coolness. Run with it. Sorry to have been slow on the uptake.

Best,

Blake

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

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.....

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.

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

Jake wrote: 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.

Jake wrote: 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.

Pale Fire wrote: 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Jake wrote: 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.

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.

Jared A. Sorensen wrote:
* Yeah, you could tie this into a "Who gets to decide what happens?" mechanic.

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

-Vincent

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.

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

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)

Pale Fire wrote: 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)

Well then just go for it. Let's us know what happens. :)