Quote from: tenbones on January 19, 2023, 09:58:57 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 19, 2023, 09:39:25 AM

For whatever reasons, werewolves haven't been popular outside of the white wolf fandom. The most I've seen done were those times they tried making additional mini-settings for Forsaken, like teen wolves and sumerian era demigods. I thought a number of the ideas were interesting, but I always felt they were held back by the monomyth about Father Wolf and the eternally hostile spirit world. It's not cringy ecoterrorism, but it is still a monomyth that heavily restricts what you can do.

I always thought the Forsaken myth of Father Wolf being killed was "whatever, okay." But the idea that the Garou who took the marks of Luna were actual bad guys, and Luna was the crazy one, made more sense narratively.

A simple flip, and the myth seems to change things for me. No need at all for the environmental silliness. You can even combine it with the Apocalypse myth and make the Forsaken the Black Spirals. I loved the territorial rules of Forsaken.

But yeah - Werewolf in general was never as popular as Vampire. But as you know, these ideas can be done a lot of different ways, your mileage may vary.

Yeah, white wolf always struggled to write coherent backstories. Everything has to be convoluted af.

I would've just had werewolves invent their own myths to explain their origins, rather than having a single myth that is known and believed truth planetwide. For example, you could have Christian werewolves that fight demons and are patronized by guardian angels, next to pagan werewolves that believe themselves the divinely blessed descendants of Remus and are patronized by guardian eudemons, next to cursed dudes who involuntarily transform under the full moon and are haunted by hallucinations of their victims, next to devotees of Artemis, etc.

Add some more entries to the pile:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/325047/Dark-Necessities

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/405602/Fanged--Lightweight-vampire-RPG

^These two are very short. Try them out if you want something that doesn't require much pre-reading.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/343626/Low-Stakes <- If you want to play What We Do In The Shadows, this was explicitly made to do that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/126591/Upir-Gaunt-Protocol-Game-Series-21 <- If you like monstrous vampires that suddenly wake up in modern times, this is for that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/99313/Vampire-City-English <- I haven't read it in detail, but it seems to be similar to Undying.

It's difficult to find vampire-related stuff on drivethrurpg because WW products clutter the search results and you can't filter them out.

Anyone wanna try out Vampire Alone in the Darkness online and put it through its paces?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 25, 2023, 07:33:53 PM
Add some more entries to the pile:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/325047/Dark-Necessities

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/405602/Fanged--Lightweight-vampire-RPG

^These two are very short. Try them out if you want something that doesn't require much pre-reading.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/343626/Low-Stakes <- If you want to play What We Do In The Shadows, this was explicitly made to do that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/126591/Upir-Gaunt-Protocol-Game-Series-21 <- If you like monstrous vampires that suddenly wake up in modern times, this is for that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/99313/Vampire-City-English <- I haven't read it in detail, but it seems to be similar to Undying.

It's difficult to find vampire-related stuff on drivethrurpg because WW products clutter the search results and you can't filter them out.

Some of these games might be good for one shots.

I have a few thoughts so far.

Read more through Vampire City. It's a toolkit game for playing vampires. The group can decide on the period (historical, modern, post-apocalyptic, etc) and the rules for vampirism itself. Vampire hunters are permissible character options, too, but there's a greater focus on playable vampires as opposed to purely antagonistic vampires. This makes it a mirror of Night's Black Agents, which is centered around vampire hunters but does occasionally allow vampires to be playable. There's no humanity mechanic whatsoever. It can handle long-running campaigns.

Feed, Night's Black Agents, Undying, and Vampire City are some of the few toolkit vampire games I've found. All of these let the group devise their own lore from the outset, and typically provide 4 campaign settings each. Feed places the emphasis firmly on the internal struggle between humanity and vampirism, which the rules are built around from the ground up, but it includes provisions for playing evil b-movie vamps that use their humanity merely as a cover. The rules are fairly abstract and simplified, so it may take some getting used to if you're more familiar with more complex/concrete systems. Undying is focused firmly around politics and territory and so forth, so it has detailed rules for these. Vampire City places a greater emphasis on developing the external world compared to Feed, but lacks the more robust rules for handling politics that Undying does.

Blood Dark Thirst, The Blood Hack, and The Vampire: Alone in the Darkness are not toolkits. Each is built around a default setting. Vampires are generally treated as demonic reanimated corpses here, only sometimes with some kind of morality/humanity mechanic or internal struggle. These are very dark fantasy or splatterpunk. Blood Hack and Alone in the Darkness both provide character classes/cliques if you prefer that structure.

By Night We Thirst is a collection of premade settings exploring different takes on the vampire taken directly from existing fiction. It is a supplement fort FATE, not a complete game. You could use it as a resource for another game, however.

The Blood has a default setting, but what sets it apart from other games is that it treats vampirism as a freeform magic system. The titular "The Blood" is a mystical force that empowers vampires and allows them to alter reality through force of will by consuming blood. There's no humanity mechanic: the moral corruption is treated purely as the result of player choice rather than struggling with an inner demon.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 26, 2023, 10:51:45 AM
I have a few thoughts so far.

Read more through Vampire City. It's a toolkit game for playing vampires. The group can decide on the period (historical, modern, post-apocalyptic, etc) and the rules for vampirism itself. Vampire hunters are permissible character options, too, but there's a greater focus on playable vampires as opposed to purely antagonistic vampires. This makes it a mirror of Night's Black Agents, which is centered around vampire hunters but does occasionally allow vampires to be playable. There's no humanity mechanic whatsoever. It can handle long-running campaigns.

I found a review of this after your post. I quite like the sound of it, but I'm not mad about GMless games. I also thought the player 'bidding' thing sounded strange too.

So if you wanted to play a more conventional game with this can it do that? Does it give you info on powers or do the players make it up?

Ta'!

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on January 26, 2023, 11:13:19 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 26, 2023, 10:51:45 AM
I have a few thoughts so far.

Read more through Vampire City. It's a toolkit game for playing vampires. The group can decide on the period (historical, modern, post-apocalyptic, etc) and the rules for vampirism itself. Vampire hunters are permissible character options, too, but there's a greater focus on playable vampires as opposed to purely antagonistic vampires. This makes it a mirror of Night's Black Agents, which is centered around vampire hunters but does occasionally allow vampires to be playable. There's no humanity mechanic whatsoever. It can handle long-running campaigns.

I found a review of this after your post. I quite like the sound of it, but I'm not mad about GMless games. I also thought the player 'bidding' thing sounded strange too.

So if you wanted to play a more conventional game with this can it do that? Does it give you info on powers or do the players make it up?

Ta'!

I imagine you could probably house rule that to use a GM/player structure.

There is a list of generic powers with explanations on how they work. The group is free to modify these and invent others.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 26, 2023, 11:19:46 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on January 26, 2023, 11:13:19 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 26, 2023, 10:51:45 AM
I have a few thoughts so far.

Read more through Vampire City. It's a toolkit game for playing vampires. The group can decide on the period (historical, modern, post-apocalyptic, etc) and the rules for vampirism itself. Vampire hunters are permissible character options, too, but there's a greater focus on playable vampires as opposed to purely antagonistic vampires. This makes it a mirror of Night's Black Agents, which is centered around vampire hunters but does occasionally allow vampires to be playable. There's no humanity mechanic whatsoever. It can handle long-running campaigns.

I found a review of this after your post. I quite like the sound of it, but I'm not mad about GMless games. I also thought the player 'bidding' thing sounded strange too.

So if you wanted to play a more conventional game with this can it do that? Does it give you info on powers or do the players make it up?

Ta'!

I imagine you could probably house rule that to use a GM/player structure.

There is a list of generic powers with explanations on how they work. The group is free to modify these and invent others.

Cool, I'll pick it up. As I was saying I'm writing my own vamp game at the moment and I'm trying to get as many resources for information as possible.

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on January 26, 2023, 11:13:19 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 26, 2023, 10:51:45 AM
I have a few thoughts so far.

Read more through Vampire City. It's a toolkit game for playing vampires. The group can decide on the period (historical, modern, post-apocalyptic, etc) and the rules for vampirism itself. Vampire hunters are permissible character options, too, but there's a greater focus on playable vampires as opposed to purely antagonistic vampires. This makes it a mirror of Night's Black Agents, which is centered around vampire hunters but does occasionally allow vampires to be playable. There's no humanity mechanic whatsoever. It can handle long-running campaigns.

I found a review of this after your post. I quite like the sound of it, but I'm not mad about GMless games. I also thought the player 'bidding' thing sounded strange too.

So if you wanted to play a more conventional game with this can it do that? Does it give you info on powers or do the players make it up?

Ta'!

GM-less play is just one option in it.  It supports play with a GM right out of the box as an option.  You can even use the tables it provides for GM-less play for aiding you in coming up with scenarios and such.

Quote from: Batjon on January 26, 2023, 11:37:49 AM

Quote from: Rob Necronomicon on January 26, 2023, 11:13:19 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 26, 2023, 10:51:45 AM
I have a few thoughts so far.

Read more through Vampire City. It's a toolkit game for playing vampires. The group can decide on the period (historical, modern, post-apocalyptic, etc) and the rules for vampirism itself. Vampire hunters are permissible character options, too, but there's a greater focus on playable vampires as opposed to purely antagonistic vampires. This makes it a mirror of Night's Black Agents, which is centered around vampire hunters but does occasionally allow vampires to be playable. There's no humanity mechanic whatsoever. It can handle long-running campaigns.

I found a review of this after your post. I quite like the sound of it, but I'm not mad about GMless games. I also thought the player 'bidding' thing sounded strange too.

So if you wanted to play a more conventional game with this can it do that? Does it give you info on powers or do the players make it up?

Ta'!

GM-less play is just one option in it.  It supports play with a GM right out of the box as an option.  You can even use the tables it provides for GM-less play for aiding you in coming up with scenarios and such.

Thanks! That's good to know.

Adding this newcomer to the list:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/430585/The-Vampyre-Hack

The same publisher also released games for ghosts and magi. I haven't read it yet, but the blurb sounds like a pretty generic clone.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 19, 2023, 11:01:58 AM
Adding this newcomer to the list:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/430585/The-Vampyre-Hack

The same publisher also released games for ghosts and magi. I haven't read it yet, but the blurb sounds like a pretty generic clone.

Nice one. I must check that out. Ta'.

Reading it right now. It's a blatant ripoff and the author even admits to this in the intro. Which... I mean, I give him credit for honesty after the author of Vampire: Undeath openly lied that he was being original when he obviously wrote a blatant ripoff. But it's still a blatant ripoff with a direct 1:1 correspondence between splats and mechanics that are renamed to avoid lawsuits. Everlasting was obviously a clone but the author of that tried very hard to make it distinct by using folklore as the basis for splats.

The renames aren't even very good, but feel arbitrary, random and torturous. Which is actually how the White Wolf games pick names, so I give the author credit for accurately mimicking that. But I hate that style of naming things. It's like how hack writers pick overly flowery words from thesaurus rather than using simple English.

No offense to the writer. It's his choice to write a ripoff and he admits this, so I can't blame him.

I'm reading the Ghost and Magus hacks. These are very clearly derivatives of White Wolf, to a greater or lesser degree. The Magus Hack has nine splats that are quite clearly ripoffs of Mage: The Ascension, but it doesn't have the same cosmology/antagonists and has a corruption stat called "Hubris" (this is pretty obviously drawing inspiration from Awakening) so it's not as much of a ripoff as the Vampyre Hack. The Ghost Hack is the least of a ripoff, since it has its own splats and reduces key aspects of its source material like the afterlife slaver empire or the evil split personality to optional rules (which I don't mind, as those parts were just typical WW baggage that over-complicates a simple premise).

I'm curious as to whether the author is working on a werewolf hack, but I can understand why one doesn't exist given the source material is social justice madness.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on January 14, 2023, 12:22:19 PM
Here's a list: (Sorry about the quality, typing on my phone)

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/124387 <- This one is my personal favorite

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/375472

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/223788

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/219754

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/2945

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/317710

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/308014

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/692

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/106783

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/202601

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/174206

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/306279

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153464

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/212511

Some of them are more general urban fantasy, but offer vampiric characters

Very nice list. Some more to add for completeness:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/156434 (I've never played or read it)

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/731

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/1377