Vampires discussion (archive)
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Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 14:23:15 +0900
From: "David Farnell" <pj.en.tta.awi|fad#pj.en.tta.awi|fad>

Obviously, every Keeper has his or her own take on vampires, so this is really just to give people ideas (like everything on this list). I wanted to create vampires as a Mythos race-something that would fit well with the flavor of the Mythos. These vampires are meant to be a minor Mythos "race," not the main focus of the campaign, but rather something to be a thread in the tapestry of a campaign. They have not been designed to be used as PCs-although it wouldn't take much changing to make them into reasonably balanced PCs, especially considering the very slow growth of vampiric powers. And a PC could always get changed over…

The Blood Points and vampiric powers are taken right from V:tM. One problem: all my WoD books are 14 time zones away, so I can't consult them. Thus, I can't go into any sort of detail on vampiric powers and the like. Otherwise, the vampires as I see them are really pretty different from the WoD vampires. Not to put them down (the WoD games are extremely rich sources of inspiration, although there's some things about them I don't like), but they don't really mesh well with the Mythos. All the sturm-und-drang, the angst, the suffocating politics and endless conspiracies of Vampire: the Masquerade combine to outweigh the Mythos. They're just not sustainable together. But I give White Wolf and Anne Rice all due credit for their excellent creations, while acknowledging Bram Stoker, Whitney Streiber, Fred Saberhagen, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro as my main inspirations.

A couple of quick game terms.

BLOOD POINTS: I think Vampiric feeding should simply be draining CON from (and inflicting bite damage on) victims for Magic Points. Instead of gaining an MP every 4 hours or what have you, vampires lose 1d6 MP per day. Of course, vamps could only gain additional MP by sucking blood. Diablerie would then be draining another Vampire completely for +1 POW, no ritual needed, unless you're sharing. BP for stat bonuses would then be on a one for one basis. Boosted attributes should last 1d6 turns, Vampires must make a POWx3 roll to determine the duration (of their own boosted attributes).

Note that the randomness of Blood loss and duration of stat boost make things dicey for the vampire. Things are tough all over.

Blood is the key element in Vampire. Everything should revolve around the krovvy red substance. Therefore, the mechanics should be as simple as possible to minimize confusion. I also recommend that sunlight eat 1 BP/MP per hour/minute/second what have you. This makes vamps scurry out of the sun like they should. Maybe 1d6 for the initial exposure, and a more gradual loss thereafter.

LIFE POINTS: These are, basically, experience points that the vampire can use to boost Characteristics and Blood Pool on a permanent basis, or buy vampiric Powers (such as those from V:tM and supplements). Vampires start out with no powers other than the Blood Points-new vampires don't even have Vampire Teeth, and either have to chew their victims' necks open, or rely on blades or hypodermic needles to get at the blood.

Vampires get 1 LP per decade. Thus, a 400-year-old would have 40 LPs. (If you want to be kind, give vampires 1d6 LPs to start with.) These are spent very simply by changing them on a 1-for-1 basis to increase Characteristics or Blood Points. They can also be used to buy vampiric powers such as Protean, Celerity, etc., 1 LP per level of the power-and the vampire buy at least one power at level one before buying a level-two power, one at level two before buying a level-three power, etc. (Vampire Teeth is a Level 1 Protean power.)

As far as increasing Characteristics goes, obviously increasing EDU is silly, as the vampire gets +1 per decade anyway, as per the CoC rules. As vampires live so long, and they can't be expected to remember everything, max out EDU at 24. If they want it higher than that, they can buy it up with Life Points.

[I had a much more complicated system based on a variable number of points per year, and a progressive way of buying up Characteristics that made it more expensive the higher the Char was, but it just got to be too complex for something meant to be a minor NPC race. If you want to try using these rules to run a group of vampiric PCs, you might want to develop a more complex system that can reward their efforts rather than just their lifespans.]

ORIGIN: A person is turned into a vampire by first dying and then being resurrected through a spell we'll call "vampiric resurrection," although of course it has many names all over the world. This form of resurrection does not involve reducing the body to essential salts or anything like that, and chanting it backwards has no effect, but does tend to make vampires laugh. There's a theory that it's a "flawed" resurrection spell. Others say it was bequeathed by Nyarlathotep as a joke or part of a grand scheme. As it's still being handed out now and then, the latter is probably true. There are perennial rumors of a spell that will "cure" vampirism, but it probably doesn't exist. Anyway, vampirism isn't all that angst-inspiring, so nobody's looking very hard for a cure.

The Spell: The "sire" drains the "child" as completely as possible, killing him. The sire then paints the body with the words of the chant in a proto-Sanskrit script (this part takes months to learn how to do right), the "ink" being the sire's blood (mixed with the child's blood, of course). All the while, the sire is chanting the spell in a proto-Indo-European language, mixed with a fair amount of Aklo. All this chanting goes on until the next midnight (astrological-REALLY midnight, with the sun as far away as possible-so it will probably not be quite the same as midnight according to the clock), at which point the sire slashes her wrists and pours blood into the child's mouth. The child awakens and goes into a feeding frenzy-the sire can feed the child from her own blood, or toss him a victim (conveniently tied up in the corner).

The sire loses 1 Power and 1d6 SAN, and must give at least 2 Blood Points to the child. The child loses 1d20 SAN for dying and seeing what lies beyond. This is reduced to 1d10 if the sire is the child's lover, and/or if the sire prepared the child for the ordeal and sticks around to provide comfort and instruction. If the child kills the sire in the initial feeding frenzy (it's possible), be sure to charge appropriate SAN loss (more if they were lovers, less if this was a "rape" situation), and also charge SAN if the child kills a human victim during the frenzy.

All this means a very expensive spell. The sire loses POW and SAN, and the child loses a big-ass load of SAN, potentially. (Of course, a lot of vampires are at 0 SAN, so they don't have to worry about it.) There are also additional dangers: astral parasites (see Golden Dawn), ghosts, and other spirits have plenty of time to displace the child's psyche and take over the body. After becoming a vampire, they could feign amnesia (while they slowly work through the chemical memories in the brain) and impersonate the child. (Knowing the Magic Circle spell or some other protective thing helps here.) Also, many vampires don't know the spell - it has to be learned like any spell, and elder vampires are careful who they teach it to, as it gives them great power over others. This means that the spell is performed rarely, so the vampiric population grows very slowly.

Another spell that probably originally came from Nyarlathotep or some other joker is the Diablerie Ritual. This allows a vampire to steal another vampire's psyche, giving the diabolic a big boost in ability. The diabolic vampire drains the victim vampire to 0 Blood Points, then to 0 Hit Points. At that point, the victim falls into torpor, and the diabolic starts the ritual, which involves continuing to suck the victim dry while engaging the victim in psychic battle (visualized as the two vampires battling on the astral plane; in game terms, a simple POW-vs-POW resistance roll should take care of it, although you can drag it out if you want). The diabolic must expend 10 Magic Points, and SAN loss for doing such a horrible thing is 1d8.

If the diabolic wins, divide the victim's POW by 2. That's the number of Life Points the diabolic gets, in a rush. The diabolic also consumes the victim's psyche and experiences occasional flashes of the victim's memories and emotions for centuries after, and loses an additional 1d8 SAN. If the victim wins, he escapes to wherever psyches go and the diabolic gets nothing, although the victim is still dead. If the diabolic makes a critical success, he gets LPs equal to the victim's POW. If the victim gets a critical success, the diabolic loses 1d3 POW and 1d10 SAN.

Obviously, diabolics don't stay sane for long, and the act is also addicting. Once they've done it, they'll do it again and again. The boost in Life Points is potentially equal to about 50 years or more of normal gain, so it's extremely tempting, and although elders regularly kill anyone guilty of knowing the ritual, rituals to summon Nyarlathotep in his Black Man of the Witches Sabbat form are easy to learn, and N is always happy to teach vampires how to cannibalize each other. They're even more fun than humans.

SOCIETY: These factors-slow reproduction and cannibalism-combine to make the vampire population very small. There are probably no more than 1,000 vampires on the planet, and many of them are ancients in torpor (they didn't want to commit suicide, but they were tired of living). And many vampires commit suicide after a few decades-they find that they aren't psychologically adapted to living forever. That's the case with most humans, after all, and vampires still have human minds, for a while, at least.

As a result, there is no Camarilla, no Sabbat, no Anarchs, no real organization of any kind. Ancients don't manipulate the youngsters much, as the ancients are terrified of the youngsters. In fact, vampires are terrified of each other, period. They generally avoid each other like the plague, because you never know if the other guy has the Diablerie Ritual-and of course, the first sign of a diabolic is that she wants to be friends. Diabolics are the only ones looking for other vampires, so friendly, curious vampires should be pre-emptively killed. Elders are more interested in survival than world domination-and even if they do want to control the world, they don't trust other vampires to help them.

Vampires are behind a little bit of the misery in our human lives, but not really all that much. They'd like to think they are more important. There are no Clans (due to the low population and the paranoia), no Bloodlines or Generations or Curse of Caine (due to the origin). This makes them simpler, so they don't overwhelm the Mythos in importance. I've also left out the Blood Bond, although it could be added back in without much trouble.

Vampires do occasionally form groups, however. In New York City, there are six vampires who have some contact with each other. The vampires of New York have developed rules of conduct, a simpler, more anarchic version of the Camarilla rules, that have held so far and kept them from each other's throats. Alzis acts as a neutral arbiter-they do work for him now and then, and in return he agrees to immediately destroy any vampire that diabolizes another.

SUPERNATURAL STUFF: A new vampire is not so tough. Vampires don't age, and sunlight only bothers them a little (direct sunlight on the skin reduces all skill rolls to half from the distraction and discomfort-direct sunlight in the eyes causes temporary blindness). Wearing a coat, hat, and sunglasses is enough to avoid problems. However, the Blood Points and vampiric powers cannot be used when the sun is above the horizon.

Characteristics don't change after one becomes a vampire, although one gains the Blood Pool, with 2d6+6 Blood Points (a new characteristic). At first, one has NO vampiric powers other than the ability to use the Blood Points.

SANITY: As they live so long, and are usually so isolated, vampires are usually completely insane (0 SAN) by the time they are a few centuries old, and many lose it even earlier. Many vampires seek to learn more of the Mythos, which wipes out humans pretty darned quickly-vampires won't last any longer. And vampires find it hard to "heal" their sanity, because of their isolation from human and vampire company. However, vampires who have a "child" for company, or who have contact with human and even vampire friends, may be able to slow the loss of SAN and last quite some time.

Vampires with 0 SAN are common - they develop "tropes" (see William Timmins' ENDTIMES website), which can be likened to the Sabbat's Paths of enlightenment - to continue dealing with the world in a "rational" way.

Keepers should assess SAN loss for killing victims, "raping" (stealing blood from unwilling victims), etc. SAN loss might be less if the vampire preys upon only vicious criminals or something like that.

DRINKING BLOOD: If the victim is unwilling, the vampire will have to grapple him. After a successful grapple that the victim fails to break, the feeding can begin - the vampire's bite is automatically successful. If the victim is willing, then this part is obviously skipped.

Without vampire teeth, chewing open a victim's veins is a very traumatic event for both vampire and victim, probably causing SAN loss in addition to 1d3 HPs damage. Once the vampire has done 3 HPs damage, the blood starts flowing big-time, and the victim loses 1d6 CON per round until dead. The vampire can save the victim by spending 2 BPs to heal the damage - but the vampire had better not expect the victim to willingly submit to such treatment again!

Using vampire teeth or a very sharp knife (like a scalpel), the blood can be taken with much less pain and mess. In this case, the vampire can choose to inflict only 1 HP of damage total to get the blood flowing, and then can stop the blood flow by using 1 of her own Blood Points to heal the victim (when the vampire caused the wound while drinking, the vampire can heal the wound - this is the only time vampires can heal others' wounds without special powers or magic). A hypodermic needle can draw out blood without causing the victim any significant damage.

Blood is drained as CON - the victim loses 1d3 CON per round (less for a hypodermic needle, which can take ages). If the vampire drinks no more than about 1/3 of the victim's CON, the victim will be all right in a few days (healing 1 CON per day). Overindulging can necessitate hospitalization, or can even result in death (which might be on purpose). Each point of CON is turned into one Blood Point.

Once the vampire starts drinking, the act becomes extremely erotic, and the victim usually stops struggling (if he was not willing) - POWx3 roll to continue struggling.

Animals are legitimate sources of blood, but it is highly unsatisfying, and most vampires hate it - it feels like bestiality to them. (OTOH, some vampires REALLY like it…) The vampire must drain 2 pts of CON to make one BP.

Editor's note: more data and opinions surfaced as we were moving an old mainframe down corridor 23, and can be found in a recent additional appendix


Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 17:57:28 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black

I think life points are equally cumbersome. Older Vampires should simply have more POW (and thus more MP) from diablerie and years of drinking blood. Vampiric POW would also cap bonuses to STR, CON, DEX, APP. This means that new vampires with low POW are Shit Outta Luck if they want to raise their stats with blood. Newbies would have to satisfy themselves with spending MP for HP.

Certain abilities (Disciplines) would then be bought with POW. So the ability to turn into mist, or a bat, or mesmerize, would all require an investment of POW. One POW per level of the discipline (in Storyteller) should suffice. This prevents elders from becoming giant POW batteries. The point is, why add Life Points (which you obviously stole from Magic: The Gathering :) when you can use POW?

Hopefully my ideas will lead to a more elegant game design.

ORIGIN: A person is turned into a vampire by first dying and then being resurrected through a spell we'll call "vampiric resurrection," although of course it has many names all over the world.

Mythos vampires should have *many* possible origins, like superheroes. Botched sorcery, star vampire virii, possession by crazed spirits, and alien parasitism are all good possibilities. Perhaps it's some spooky combo of all of the above.

That whole "it's a bad spell" shit is just too pat an explanation, vampires need to be mysterious.

Anyway, vampirism isn't all that angst-inspiring, so nobody's looking very hard for a cure.

I think being forced to drink blood forever would be pretty annoying and angsty myself…

I think ignoring the Clans is a big mistake. Immortal creatures living for millenia are going to build cults around themselves. In the Mythos, this cultic aspect should be even more pronounced. Some clans (Tremere, Set, Tzimisce) need little fudging to fit this profile. Others (Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu) show great potential for Cultification.

All the clans can be worked in over time. De-emphasis is fine, make the clans little more than Vampiric Secret Societies. That's a perfectly valid (read: canon) way of playing the clans in a "straight" White Wolf Campaign, sorry - "Chronicle." Anyway, that's how I've always run it.

Other thinks to consider:

- Animal Blood

- The blood of Mythos creatures

- Heartbeat, sex, eating and drinking, and a truly "undead" status (Y/N)?

- Ghouls, not mythos furries, but the blood-junkie slave type.

- Torpor

- Stake through the heart?

- The Rotschreck. Do vampires frenzy? They should. Especially when they're low on blood.


Date: Sat, 13 Mar 1999 23:53:17 EST
From: Mark McFadden

Mythos vampires should have *many* possible origins, like superheroes. Botched sorcery, star vampire virii, possession by crazed spirits, and alien parasitism are all good possibilities. Perhaps it's some spooky combo of all of the above.

Purely biological origins for 'Ghoulism' have been batted around this list, I'm all for trotting them out for Vampires as well. Think of Vampirism as not so much a single disease, but a collection of symptoms. Vampires are creatures that must act like Vampires due to their condition, whatever the cause. Mystical origins enable mystical powers and MP considerations. More secular origins result in possibly immortal, certainly long-lived and resilient beings that avoid UV radiation and must ingest (can only ingest) blood.

You know, the Marvel Comics vampires.

I propose several different kinds of vampires with several different agendas. This would at least bring the various inconsistent folklore vampires back into the fold.

Dean R. Koontz goes into the details of a rare genetic disorder that makes exposure to sunlight AND electric light dangerous and cumulatively deadly in "Fear Nothing." Cancers, blindness, etc., etc., but without albinism. A long-lived-to-immortal being that cannot endure sunlight or electric light (UV from incandescent and fluorescent lighting) and only candles and other flame-based illumination are safe. The very few who can survive under those restrictions are going to be strange people indeed.


Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 18:38:49 GMT0BST
From: Robert Thomas

Purely biological origins for 'Ghoulism' have been batted around this list, I'm all for trotting them out for Vampires as well.

Personally I always liked the approach to "an" origin of vampirism I came across in of all things a Star Trek novel. Chemical / Biological weapons researchers come up with a disease vector whose symptoms manifest as classic vampirism, the need to drink blood, hyper sensitivity to light etc. The 'benefits' of vampirism strength etc come from the way the disease alters the bodies interation with its blood, all processes involving blood become more efficient putting a huge strain on the blood and forcing the infected individual to replace the, by now, 'dead' blood. As the act of self preservation on the part of an infected person, ie drinking another persons blood infects another person. This results in a devastating weapon when deployed against large population concentrations, an ideal terror weapon. The other approach I liked was the way that this disease when a person could not obtain blood to sustain itself drives the person into a state of hibernation from which the victim occasionally rises to seek new victims. Imagine the CDC trying to control this thing. I've got to get to work on this as a scenario.

Perhaps Graeme would like to offer some hypothesis on vampirism's possible biological origins.

Anyway I'm off home now as tonights game has been cancelled.


Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 16:36:11 -0500
From: Graeme Price

Perhaps Graeme would like to offer some hypothesis on vampirism's possible biological origins.

Why do all the interesting threads come up when I'm trying to write research papers? [Sigh!]

Actually (among others) Gerry Wyckoff (who I haven't seen around here for ages, unfortunately…) and I did go into this on the list a few months back. All to do with a paper which came out suggesting that vampirism and Rabies shared many of the same "symptoms". I don't know if Davide has gotten round to putting this in the 'Cave, but it might be worth a look around the archives. Alternatively, I could write something more fictional (ala the old ghoul prion thread), but that might take a while for me to get around to. I might need some encouragement though… I've got a lot on my plate a the moment.


Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 23:22:49 +0100
From: Davide Mana

It's in the Cave all right.

Look up documents about Lycanthropy and Ghouls, under Technical Update Files. This should keep you busy enough till Graeme nails his research paper and comes back on line with some more stuff.


Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 18:00:11 -0500 (EST)
From: "Andrew D. Gable"

Ah, serendipity!

No sooner had someone asked about the use of Shadowrun material in DG than Graeme and Rob started talking about DG vampires and their (possibly) biological nature. So here's the Shadowrun explanation for vampirism, quasi-biological, quasi-magical, which you can use in DG, possibly.

The explanation posited by the Shadowrun authors is infection by a magical virus called HMHVV (Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus), which grants the infected all sorts of nifty powers. Of course, in Shadowrun there's a few races, so not all HMHVV expressions would work in DG. There's probably not too many vampiric trolls running around.

Even more serendipity: at least some of the Shadowrun ghouls are the result of HMHVV infection. Hence the ghoul-vampire connection Graeme hinted at.

Anyway, HMHVV is an HIV-type retrovirus which can only be transmitted through blood contact (a vampiric bite). One of the Paranormal Animals books details the Vampiric Pawn, people addicted to a vampire's blood who don't develop HMHVV (kinda like Albino Coyote's version of ghouls). Don't underestimate 'em: after all, Mr. Straker was a real bad-ass.

I imagine that the Vampire and Nosferatu (humans), as well as the Wendigo (officially, a vampiric orc, but doesn't a sasquatch [read: voormi] work better?) and even Krieger Ghouls, would translate best into DG.

Of course, DG implications should be interesting beyond the phenomena of vampirism. Shadowrun suggests that HMHVV only affects creatures that are more or less human; in DG, what would an HMHVV-infected Deep One be like? Or a Ghoul <shudder>?


Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 09:17:06 +0900
From: "David Farnell"

The secret is to expose PC's to the horrors of the mythos (lose willpower, lose some more willpower, gain a derangement). Once they fully comprehend the infinite magnitude of it all (Souleaters, Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep) then make them realize that as vampires, they too are part and parcel of the Mythos… forever!

OK, but I think I said somewhere that these vamps were meant to be a relatively small part of a campaign, not the focus of it. When the players are DG agents or some more traditional type of investigator, and the vamps are just occasional guest-stars, all the details, politics, etc from V:tM is distracting - at least in my kind of CoC campaign. But I was trying to design these vamps to be easily modified, as all that stuff could be added back in easily if you wanted.

I think life points are equally cumbersome. Older Vampires should simply have more POW (and thus more MP) from diablerie and years of drinking blood. Vampiric POW would also cap bonuses to STR, CON, DEX, APP. This means that new vampires with low POW are Shit Outta Luck if they want to raise their stats with blood. Newbies would have to satisfy themselves with spending MP for HP.

Another good idea. I think I'll stick with an increase of 1 POW per 10 years (or incident of Diablerie - and that's actually how I had it originally, but that increase was too wimpy combined with the Life Point system), but if you use the vamps as PCs, you'll have to have some quicker increase so the players have a carrot to chase. There's always Diablerie, but the punishment is too high. Add some stronger limitations (like the greater damage from sunlight) and it should balance out.

Certain abilities (Disciplines) would then be bought with POW. So the ability to turn into mist, or a bat, or mesmerize, would all require an investment of POW. One POW per level of the discipline (in Storyteller) should suffice. This prevents elders from becoming giant POW batteries. The point is, why add Life Points (which you obviously stole from Magic: The Gathering :) when you can use POW?

I did? News to me - I tried to read the rules for M:tG a couple times and gave up - talk about overcomplication! Never played it - poker always seemed more appealing. Have to test out the POW expenditures; might be more balanced to spend 1 POW per level of Discipline (yes, that was the word I couldn't remember!). I'll make a couple of elder vamps and see if they come out OK.

Mythos vampires should have *many* possible origins, like superheroes. Botched sorcery, star vampire virii, possession by crazed spirits, and alien parasitism are all good possibilities. Perhaps it's some spooky combo of all of the above. That whole "it's a bad spell" shit is just too pat an explanation, vampires need to be mysterious.

Oh, sure, you and Mark are right - now that I look back, I see I left out the line in my notes that this is just one of many kinds of vamps. I also wanted to have the ones from KULT - very alien types.

I think ignoring the Clans is a big mistake. Immortal creatures living for millenia are going to build cults around themselves. In the Mythos, this cultic aspect should be even more pronounced. Some clans (Tremere, Set, Tzimisce) need little fudging to fit this profile. Others (Gangrel, Malkavian, Nosferatu) show great potential for Cultification.

Again, it goes back to the purpose of vamps in the campaign. If they are a small part of the game and there's only a few of them, AND they avoid each other because of Diablerie, then it would be very hard for them to build these cults. One possibility: Vampires used to be much more numerous, before Diablerie became epidemic and tore vampiric society apart. The old cults fell apart, but now there are small groups trying to rebuild, enforcing the laws harshly to create a society and stamp out Diablerie. That could be the basis for a vampiric conspiracy that involves the investigators. Imagine that a bunch of vamps are trying to rebuild a Malkavian cult in NYC, and the players have to investigate who's doing all these bizarre pranks.

- Animal Blood

Animals have POW, and perhaps they have Magic Points, but weaker. Have them provide half the amount of MPs by CON than humans would. That is, Humans would be: 1 CON drained becomes 1 MP for the vamp. Animals: 2 CON = 1 MP.

- The blood of Mythos creatures

Heh heh. Vampires are free to experiment. This could be a source of new mutations of vampires. And what about a vamp taking the Unspeakable Oath?

- Heartbeat, sex, eating and drinking, and a truly "undead" status (Y/N)?

That was going to be in the next post. I was going to have no heartbeat or need to breathe, although they can be induced by experienced vamps. Sex - most vamps drop it after a while because it just doesn't compare to drinking blood. Others keep doing it for fun, sentimental reasons, or as an additional reward to blood sources, or as a method of seduction. If vamps don't "do it" for several years, they tend to lose the ability, so they have to keep in practice. Eating and drinking - same. Vamps can't digest it, though, so they have to purge later. That gets annoying enough that most vamps give up eating, maybe just taking a little wine now and then (Dracula was a teetotaler). Truly undead? Problematic - the way I play them, they're very lively, and certainly don't FEEL half-alive. But they do stop aging, can't heal without using MPs (see how far I've gone over to your idea already?), can't reproduce normally (although many cultures have legends that vamps can indeed make women pregnant - maybe through sorcery).

- Ghouls, not mythos furries, but the blood-junkie slave type.

I'm still thinking about that - it brings up the Blood Bond, and I'm not sure I want that in my game. Major implications.

- Torpor

I already handled that - lose all MPs and HPs, go into torpor. Other details later, I guess.

- Stake through the heart?

Ah, yes, another I put off for the next post. The heart is important for controlling movement/expenditure of blood. Any object (the stake can be made of wood, plastic, metal, whatever) piercing the heart and staying in there will therefore paralyze the vamp and prevent it from using POW or MPs (although it can still use POW in defense on the Resistance Table). The vamp still can sense everything going on, and could perhaps even communicate slowly and painfully. Torpor comes after MPs and HPs drain away with time.

Killing a vamp requires completely destroying the heart and/or brain. If only the heart is destroyed, the vamp is still semi-conscious forever (until the brain is destroyed). If only the brain is destroyed, the heart is still "alive" and useful to sorcerers. Destruction must be by fire, acid, or something like that.

- The Rotschreck. Do vampires frenzy? They should. Especially when they're low on blood.

Yup, they sure do. That was a major point of my game yesterday, in which I first introduced these vampires. No mechanic yet for it, though.

Speaking of which, Mark mentioned Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz - one of my players whipped that out of her bag just after the game and showed it to us, saying it was really cool. Fnord.


Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 03:01:15 +0100 (CET)
From: Janusz A. Urbanowicz

Personally I always liked the approach to "an" origin of vampirism I came across in of all things a Star Trek novel. Chemical / Biological weapons researchers come up with a disease vector whose symptoms manifest as classic vampirism, the need to drink blood, hyper sensitivity to light etc. The 'benefits' of vampirism strength

There IS such a disease. It is called 'porphyrism' (sp ?) and its symptoms are: white skin, oversensitivity to sunlight etc. AFAIR it is a genetical disease. Probably Graeme could elaborate.

Perhaps Graeme would like to offer some hypothesis on vampirism's possible biological origins.

I am currently (still) running a scenario where vampires invade city and the players are the one aware that there is something wrong. The public thinks it is our town's first serial killer. The point is that the vampires are humans who had contact with an Mythos being, which leaved a 'trail' - a slimy parasite (little similarity to MESSIAH described in ADG.RM-0077 ("The Miracle")), that slowly replaces his host tissue giving him extraordinary powers (strength, speed and mind-control, and some others). This creature is known to local counterpart of DG as BLOODWORM, and is _purely_ biological. Grown-in BLOODWORM has some nervous system, its primary task is to force host to drink blood which is BLOODWORMs food. BWs aren't sentient, their hosts remain sentient, but BWs needs influence is noticeable. BWs host doesn't grow fangs, nor tongue sting.

If anyone interested in details I intend to write full report for posting on the list (and I thought of submitting it for the DG Web) but I have to refresh my Write English skill, and get some free time (I have to embed some attractors for my MSc thesis RSN).


Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 23:22:03 EST
From: Mark McFadden

Ah, yes, another I put off for the next post. The heart is important for controlling movement/expenditure of blood. Any object (the stake can be made of wood, plastic, metal, whatever) piercing the heart and staying in there will therefore paralyze the vamp and prevent it from using POW or MPs (although it can still use POW in defense on the Resitance Table). The vamp still can sense everything going on, and could perhaps even communicate slowly and painfully. Torpor comes after MPs and HPs drain away with time.

That was also Richard Matheson's take in "I Am Legend" (made into movies as "The Last Man On Earth" and "The Omega Man"). His 'secular' vampires are probably the template for the Marvel Universe vamps and most every other sci-fi explanation for vampirism.

Y'know, cheesy as it was, I've got a warm spot for "The Omega Man." For a growing boy, Charlton Heston's condo (and to some extent, lifestyle) in that flick were, like, too cool. C'mon guys, 'fess up. Deep down, being a Heinleinian hero in an apocalyptic world complete with Fortress of Solitude furnished with The Treasures Of A Lost World while threatened by such unambiguously nasty enemies as network news anchors turned vampire is still kinda too cool. And later, he got to boink a fine fox with a Foxy Brown natural. Hehe, end of the world, baby, do what thou wilt! "Bang! Winged 'im! Fuckin' bloodsuckers. Hail to the King baby. Gimme some sugar…anna fresh martini. Bang! Bullseye! Don't fuck with the eagles 'less you know how to fly!"

ObDG: Alternate universe? How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The Endtimes?


Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 02:08:42 PST
From: "Stabernide -"

Mythos vampires should have *many* possible origins, like >superheroes. Botched sorcery, star vampire virii, possession by crazed spirits, >and alien parasitism are all good possibilities. Perhaps it's some spooky combo of all of the above.

My boys and I came across a vampire not too long ago; it had been employed by NRO Delta to kill off a prominent Brother of the Yellow Sign and international arms dealer specialising in 'black' technology(Lester Aarnett - aka. 'The Sugar Daddy'; not a very nice man), whose safehouse in Mexico City was decked out with all the latest in electronic security. The vampire, being invisible to CCTV, thermographs, etc. was the ideal assasin.

Later, after taking it into custody, and whilst being questioned by Agents Solo and Scarlett, it claimed to be one of a group of dreamers who had died and gone over to the Dreamlands; missing home, they made a deal with Nyarlatrop to regain a physical, real-world existence. However; whatever their physical bodies were now comprised of (A-cell reports tests inconclusive), they found it to be dimensionally unstable (hence the mirrors, video camera's etc), and in need of regular 'topping up' via human tissue - blood being the easiest form for them to extract and ingest. Those that refused initially to do this found that they simply faded away into non-existence within a few days. The others decided to get on with earning an 'un-living'.

Anyway, it tried to escape at this point, so the only other thing I can report is fire will kill them alright; because we went and torched it's sorry ass.


Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 19:41:59 +0900
From: "David Farnell"

No sooner had someone asked about the use of Shadowrun material in DG than Graeme and Rob started talking about DG vampires and their (possibly) biological nature. So here's the Shadowrun explanation for vampirism, quasi-biological, quasi-magical, which you can use in DG, possibly.

I thought about that, but it had been years since I'd looked into the Shadowrun materials and I couldn't remember much of it. But I do seem to remember another interesting, non-supernatural (I think) origin for vamps in a Cyberpunk sourcebook. Then again, it might be from one of the dozen or so cyberpunk-style games that came out a few years ago.

Anyhow, this sourcebook was one of a series of "spooky" supplements for Cyberpunk (or whatever game it was). The vamps in that also suffered from a virus or something that gave them immortality, sensitivity to sunlight, etc. The only reason I bring it up is the interesting explanation for the "Nosferatu" look: all vampires eventually get that way. It's from absorbing cosmic rays and other environmental radiation, which causes tumors, hair falling out, etc. It's a sort of cancer, but benign, although it does make them ugly. I think I must have had this in the back of my head when I was writing about The Unspeakable Oath and "immortalized" cells.


Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 12:42:46 +0100
From: Davide Mana

Mark Mcfadden was faster tham me pointing out the relevance of Richard Matheson's "I am a Legend" to this discussion. I'll avoid any fannish rant about that book, but I'd like to offer some more fodder for the Mythos Vampire thread anyway - sticking to the general rationalizing pattern we usually follow for Mythos races.

If nothing else, Dave will be able to feed these theories to his players as a smoke-screen.

This is going to be long and rambling, sorry.

The Man in Black wrote

Mythos vampires should have *many* possible origins, like superheroes. Botched sorcery, star vampire virii, possession by crazed spirits, and alien parasitism are all good possibilities. Perhaps it's some spooky combo of all of the above.

That whole "it's a bad spell" shit is just too pat an explanation, vampires need to be mysterious.

Right!

Let's try to fit this in and see if it suits you…

Two theories are today dominating the field of vampiric study, as seen in the 1992 Cerisy-la-Salle conference (cfr. 'Colloque de Cerisy. Les vampires', Albin Michel, Paris 1993): one theory advocates the ancient origin of the vampire, while the other sees the vampire as a modern phenomenon.

If fact, as far as five schools of thought are present in modern vampirology (?) as far as the vampire's origin is concerned.

. Universal Origin - goes back to the Montague Summers works, and sees the vampire as an element of all cultures through time, and connects it with a form of religiosity that predates all formal religions. This is the theory most likely to be familiar with '20s investigators.

The vampiric curse starts because of casual, uncontrolled and simbolic events - date or conditions of birth, local accidents and such - and then spreads by contagion.

. Shamanic Origin - the Hungarian specialists pet theory. The vampire as undead is a transgression of the animistic premises of the shamanic worldview. The larval stage of the vampire is the "tà ltos" - a shaman that can be possessed by an animal spirit and that, after death, can come back as a vampire.

The MiB's "possession by crazed spirits" fits in this cathegory (even if it's more likely to have been informed by Anne Rice's vampire rationalization - pity).

Note: speaking of Rice - her "taltos" (without an accent) is a manipulation of the above, after the writer met the concept in a Carlo Ginzburg treaty. She further distorts the anthropological concepts by adding Celtic or Scandinavian folklore.

. Oriental Origin - according to some researchers, the vampire is born in the East (most likely India or China), and afterwards the legend (and vampirism) spreads west. This could be the basic "gaslight" theory, as popularized by Sir Richard Burton (among others).

Gypsy folklore falls in the Oriental Origin cathegory by default. A sudden or violent death can be the events that push the dead on his way to become a vampire.

. Ancien or Medieval European Origin - sees the vampire as something that originated either in late Roman times or in the Medieval period - as earlier vampires are not characterized in folklore by their blood-sucking activity.

Vampirism is triggered by sudden death (expecially during plagues), suicide, witchcraft or moral corruption, and afterwards spreads by contagion.

. Modern Origin - the most recent theory sees the vampire as a product of the 18th century. The rationale being: the vampire as we know it is never clearly presented in documents earlier than the mid 1700s.

In brief: each school has its pet theory, working on vampiric references in folklore and tradition. Each sees the vampire as the product of a time/area/culture. Each uses a progressively stricter definition of "vampire" from the catch-all system of Summer's "universal vampire" to the very detailed vampire template proposed by the Mudern Origin supporters.

What might be Mythos relevant - and is not emphasized by the researchers - is the clear evolutionary trend shown by the progression. The vampire has changed through the ages, turning, by stages, from the ubiquitous, rather non-specialized creature that is Summer's minimum common denominator into the highly specialized, European predator of the more recent case histories.

Please notice that Evolution is a pretty standard Lovecraftian tool - we evolved from badly processed lab-wastes, after all. So, what if the Mythos vampire is a creature blessed (or cursed) with an extremely high evolutionary speed?

Possibilities abound.

Think about it.

Another thought….

The only element shared by all of the above theories is the vampire's reliance on contagion to spread, or to "breed" if you like. And yet according to folklore you can turn into a vampire more or less spontaneously, having fulfilled some kind of requirement.

Can the two possibilities be reconciled?

Is vampirism a mutation triggered by some conditions - like we postulated for the Deep Ones and Ghouls?

I'll leave this here, and wait for comments, while I try and elaborate some more on the above. More on vampiric evolution, maybe, later.


Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 20:27:50 +0100
From: Mein Name

I can understand your view of "The Omega Man"!

One site you could find some Mythos Vampires would be the "Opifex Bi-monthly Random Universes" by Michael LaBossiere, which can be found at

http://user.aol.com/ontologist/web/opifex.obm.html

Somewhere on this site is a link to the older issues of it, in which you will find Wood Vampires, Old Aztec Vampires,…… Currently I'm running "The Hum" from issue 17 and with some luck:

I'LL FINALLY INTRODUCE DG WITH OR WITHOUT THE SOURCEBOOK!

If the link isn't correct anymore (My old HD with it crashed about a week ago), i've found it via http://www.rpg.net.


Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 18:25:33 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black

all the details, politics, etc from V:tM is distracting - at least in my kind of CoC campaign. But I was trying to design these vamps to be easily modified, as all that stuff could be added back in easily if you wanted.

By introducing the intrigue from the beginning, you allow a smoother transition to a regular vamp game should you run one of those later on.

Losing 1d6 per day may be a little high - I'll have to playtest it.

I estimate that fresh spawn would have to feed every two to three days, (if not every day), and elders with (30-40 POW) would have to feed maybe every week.

And the Diablerie Ritual was just for flavor, I'll admit - it's not really necessary.

It is if more than one lick is going to benefit from the blood of elders. The Tremere have a ritual called Bitter Rose, where the heart is ground up and devoured by all. It's a secret, don't tell 'em I told you.

In CoC, you might have to boost STR by 7, 8 points or more to get a higher damage bonus.

So? Too bad for them. You can say that they can only spend up to their POW on all four combined stats, that's a bit more generous. Note that WWGS hasstated that you cannot go above generation stat limits with blood. I ignore this rule, it's 5 dots or double your original score.

I don't quite understand the rule at the end there - do boosted attributes last 1d6 turns, or do vamps make a POWx3 roll - and what does the POW roll determine?

The boosted attributes last for 1d6 turns. Only the Keeper knows the exact duration for sure. The POWx3 roll is in case the vamp wants to take a turn concentrating on "feeling the burn" in order to guess how long the blood boosted stats will last.

Another good idea. I think I'll stick with an increase of 1 POW per 10 years (or incident of Diablerie - and that's actually how I had it originally, but that increase was too wimpy combined with the Life Point system), but if you use the vamps as PCs, you'll have to have some quicker increase so the players have a carrot to chase. There's always Diablerie, but the punishment is too high. Add some stronger limitations (like the greater damage from sunlight) and it should balance out.

There are other ways to get POW besides Diablerie, Mythos ways… Also, Mythos vamps should not get POW just by aging. That's just too easy. The POW bonus from aging should represent number of humans killed by exsanguination, and the accumulation of blood, and general exposure to weirdness that happens when you're dead. It should be random. perhaps roll a d6 for every 10 years, on a 4 add a POW, on a 5 add two POW, on a 6 add three POW, on a 1 *subtract* a POW (slow year).

Oh, sure, you and Mark are right - now that I look back, I see I left out the line in my notes that this is just one of many kinds of vamps. I also wanted to have the ones from KULT - very alien types.

You mean the ones from Rifts? :)

Heh heh. Vampires are free to experiment. This could be a source of new mutations of vampires. And what about a vamp taking the Unspeakable Oath?

The word for "new mutation" in the WWGS Lexicon is "bloodline." MUAHAHAHA!


Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 18:49:46 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black

Dean R. Koontz goes into the details of a rare genetic disorder that makes exposure to sunlight AND electric light dangerous and cumulatively deadly in "Fear Nothing." Cancers, blindness, etc., etc., but without albinism.

Sounds like Porphyria (SP?) or something. Light sensitivity, gum necrosis (thus "fangs"), etc…


Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 19:01:53 -0500 (EST)
From: The Man in Black

Anyhow, this sourcebook was one of a series of "spooky" supplements for Cyberpunk (or whatever game it was).

I had a couple of supplements like this with a dreaming AI before I sold off my non-GURPS CyberPunk. I think these were from Atlas Games or the precursor to Dream Pod 9, or perhaps some gnarled and fleshy eidolon of the two companies, intertwined in inchoate eternal evil.

Then again, maybe it's Nightshift? The RPG where the World of Insufficient Light meets CyberPunk 2020?


Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 00:02:41 EST
From: Mark McFadden

Sounds like Porphyria (SP?) or something. Light sensitivity, gum necrosis (thus "fangs"), etc…

Just got home and looked it up. The condition Koontz writes about is xeroderma pigmentosum - XP for short - a rare and frequently fatal genetic disorder.

Quote:

"XP victims are acutely vulnerable to cancers of the skin and eyes. Even brief exposure to sun - indeed, to any ultraviolet rays, including those from incandescent and fluorescent lights - could be disastrous for me.

"All human beings incur sunlight damage to the DNA in their cells, inviting melanoma and other malignancies. Healthy people possess a natural repair system: enzymes that strip out the damaged segments of the nucleotide strands and replace them with undamaged DNA.

"In those with XP, however, the enzymes don't function; the repair is not made. Ultraviolet-induced cancers develop easily, quickly - and metastasize unchecked.

(snip)

"Fewer than a thousand Americans have XP, and fewer than a hundred are born with it each year.

(snip)

"A handful of XPers are older than I am, a few significantly older, though most if not all of them suffered progressive neurological problems associated with their disorder. tremors of the head or hands. Hearing loss. Slurred speech. Even mental impairment.

"Except for my need to guard against the light, I am as normal and whole as anyone. I am not an albino. My eyes have color. My skin is pigmented. Although certainly I am paler than a California beach boy, I'm not ghost-white.

The UV damage is cumulative, like exposure to X-rays. XP is no smoking gun pointing to vampirism, but it does illustrate another mechanism for making sunlight toxic.

The character had to put on heavy-duty sunscreen and 100% UV proof shades and wear long sleeves to enter a hospital at night. The fluorescents.


Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 00:01:43 +1100
From: "Matt Stewart"

For an alternate source for vampires you could do worse than check out Brian Lumley's 'Necroscope' series.It was a few years since I read it but I recall the vampires in that were psuedo-Lovecraftian..all amorphous and icky.The series also had a lot of interesting uses for psis in the various secret services.The writing wasnt Shakespeare but the ideas were pretty cool.

Possibly the DG vamps might be off-cuts from MJ-12's Sub project BOUNCE?

MJ-12 has reproduced the vampiric process that has occurred throughout history as some kind of Mythos-related event?What happens when the old vamps meet MJ-12's Turbo Vampire Alpha?


Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 13:49:59 -0000
From: Ward Phil

I'm pretty sure it was cyberpunk, and I have one in a series of three adventure, which I believe had non-vampire cybered PC's waking up at night with a terrible interest in blood. Is anyone interested enough for me to go and dig them out of the attic?


Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 09:52:08 -0500
From: "Eric Brennan"

I'm pretty sure it was cyberpunk, and I have one in a series of three adventure, which I believe had non-vampire cybered PC's waking up at night with a terrible interest in blood. Is anyone interested enough for me to go and dig them out of the attic?

These were the Night's Edge adventures for CP2020, which used the Night's Edge sourcebook and Grimm's Cybertales. They were released by Janus games (or alternatively on one book, Ianus..same thing in classical latin) which was the predecessor of Dream Pod Nine. Some good ideas, some bad ideas…a mixed bag with a lot of potential for those looking for horror-cyberpunk. Along with the "World of Future Darkness" articles in White Wolf magazine, (written by Dierdre Brooks, if memory serves, not related to the Janus stuff in anyway) they allowed a lot of cross germination between CP2020 and the WoD, if you wanted to kludge.

The WoFD articles used Storyteller stats and the Night's Edge stuff used CP. A game-hacker's dream. Interestingly, an issue of Interface (I can look up which one once I get home) had a lot of Call of Cthulu/CP crossover stuff at one point, including Mythos-cyberware. I still haven't seen GURPS Cthulupunk, but the GURPS Cyberworld setting left me cold after the inspired insanity of R. Tal's Cyberpunk, and I heard it was Cyberworld with the Mythos. Anybody know anymore?

By the way CP fans, imagine Rache Bartmoss as a Mythos investigator…what do you lose when your sanity is gone already?


Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 23:17:28 EST
From: Michael Layne

Personally I always liked the approach to "an" origin of vampirism I came across in of all things a Star Trek novel. Chemical / Biological weapons researchers come up with a disease vector whose symptoms manifest as classic vampirism, the need to drink blood, hyper sensitivity to light etc.

The novel is "Bloodthirst". I, too, thought it was fairly good, in a macabre sort of way… It was good to at last see some Kirk-era Security officers who did more than go "Captain, over here! I've found - AAAARGH!!!":)

(One (non vampire) thing I liked about it was the way it depicted some less-than-perfect (corrupt, in fact) officials in Rodenberry's Utopia! IMHO, even in the 23rd Century, there are going to be dishonest people, and some of them will end up in positions of authority! They will probably feel they are doing good, and that the end justifies the casualties they inflict on their own side - but the results will be much the same as if they had set out to do evil…):)

There IS such a disease. It is called 'porphyrism' (sp ?) and its symptoms are: white skin, oversensitivity to sunlight etc. AFAIR it is a genetical disease. Probably Graeme could elaborate.

A number of years ago, "Traveller" had an "Amber Zone" scenario ("Day of the Glow", I believe it was..) which dealt with the escape of a mutant form of this disease from a research lab, and its effects upon the local populace. It had the above symptoms, and many superstitious members of the populace panicked and started treating the afflicted as vampires! ( The bit I liked the best was where it was mentioned that "religious symbols, garlic, etc. would have no visible effect on these "vampires"… A stake through the heart will kill one of them - or anybody else…"):)

I borrowed some of this scenario a bit later myself, for a scenario dealing with "vampire" commandos robbing blood banks in the former Yugoslavia!:)


Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 14:53:14 EST
From: Mark McFadden

. Ancien or Medieval European Origin - sees the vampire as something that originated either in late Roman times or in the Medieval period - as earlier vampires are not characterized in folklore by their blood-sucking activity. Vampirism is triggered by sudden death (expecially during plagues), suicide, witchcraft or moral corruption, and afterwards spreads by contagion.

I was just contemplating the spirochetes in a previous vampire post and the Black Death and the introduction of syphilis from the New World to Old. What if the original vampire 'virus' is still around, but we are now much more resistant/it mutated to a less virulent form. Like syphilis, which used to be a pretty quick death sentence, and is now a nasty syndrome that you can incubate and keep around for decades, without rendering you incapable of passing it on. IIRC.

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