Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on April 22, 2023, 03:56:29 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 22, 2023, 03:51:16 PMReally different vampire myths (non-Dracula) do exist

Care to share? I mean Im aware of lots of undead myths, but very few Vampiric specific myths in what they embody. A Juan-Shi is technically a hopping vampire, but is moreso a zombie for instance.

No problem, but either latter today or tomorrow since my game is about to start and I'm not sure where the file is.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 22, 2023, 01:03:20 PM
Ok.

I ask again: Which approach would you like to see me tackle first?

Multiple strains (clans, bloodlines, families, whatever.)

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 22, 2023, 09:39:29 AM
I think your praise of a biblical-based origin is biased by you growing up with a Christian background. There are other religions in the world with foundations that could be used with the same emotional impact for people who grew up with those backgrounds.

For example, the Hindu Yamaraja is the king of the underworld and the first man to die. You could use him as the origin of vampires. It won't have the same emotional impact if you're not Hindu. Substitute another mythological figure like Kali, Sekhmet, Ereshkigal, Susanoo, Lucifer, etc. Everlasting had its bloodlines descended from different mythical and historical figures.

But more importantly, after WW drew Cain as a goth pretty boy I can't take the idea seriously. https://www.somethingawful.com/dungeons-and-dragons/vampire-artwork-montreal/11/

That said, I'm not an antichrist who is pathologically opposed to having figures of Abrahamic folklore showup. I had this idea for groups of vampires descended from Lilith and one of her several consorts like Cain, Samael, etc. All these families descend from Lilith, but distinguish themselves by which father they descended from: the House of Cain, the House of Samael, etc.

And I also had ideas for Merovingian vampires who claim descent from Jesus Christ and maybe his apostles too. Yes, I know Dan Brown made that up but I think it would be funny if in the story Dan Brown wrote it as a misinformation tool to discredit people trying to make the truth public.

The above two ideas make use of the idea of hereditary vampires, like those purebloods in Blade, or the legacies in Netflix's First Kill. They were born vampires who knew what they were from the moment they could know anything, never going through a normal human life like the turned/brides/grooms. The children of Lilith are the direct biological descendants of Lilith and her consorts, and can turn mortals into their brides/grooms with a lesser form of vampirism. The Merovingians are the same with Jesus and Mary Magdalene, while his apostles were the first vampire grooms who were turned at the first mass when Jesus gave them his own divine blood. That's what he was referring to when he said they'd be present at his second coming, but the Church covered it up after being horrified to discover the truth.

The Vatican hates the Merovingians more than any other vampires and was responsible for nearly wiping them out multiple times. This is ironic, as the Vatican employs antichrist candidates to hunt them. (Satan has this whole scheme going on where he's impregnated lots of women with potential antichrists, according to the official story).

I love the blasphemous irony of it all. No offense.

Love your Mero's. Yeah, it owes a lot to Dan, but he owes a lot to Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

Quote from: Aglondir on April 22, 2023, 07:59:29 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 22, 2023, 01:03:20 PM
Ok.

I ask again: Which approach would you like to see me tackle first?

Multiple strains (clans, bloodlines, families, whatever.)

Are you sure you don't mean multiple substrains? Multiple strains would be something like Nightlife and Nightcrawlers. Multiple substrains would be a VTM clone/heartbreaker.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 22, 2023, 08:31:23 PM

Quote from: Aglondir on April 22, 2023, 07:59:29 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 22, 2023, 01:03:20 PM
Ok.

I ask again: Which approach would you like to see me tackle first?

Multiple strains (clans, bloodlines, families, whatever.)

Are you sure you don't mean multiple substrains? Multiple strains would be something like Nightlife and Nightcrawlers. Multiple substrains would be a VTM clone/heartbreaker.

Substrains, correct. I messed that up.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 20, 2023, 09:15:28 PM
Inspired by the VTM thread and a post from our own BoxCrayonTales pointing to a write up he did : https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQ7Nye5r0Dhm8Cp7D81stTbAWsFrl1Gxg7dpmRo5DRNJAtDcyZL0FOwAfNid4-r2yVFSLgATKj4cs89/pub

So, there's a Bloodlines build, IMHO each line should have some unique power/weakness, also in the write up there's no mechanical info, so let's try and do that for the OSR.

Powers:
    Animal Control – bats, wolves, rats, etc.
    Charm –
    Climb walls like a spider –
    Control of the elements  – Wind, rain and other natural phenomena.
    Create darkness –
    Curse –
    Flight – Fly without any outside influence.
    Fog people's minds (improved implant a whole set of memories) –
    Immortal – The power to never age and recover from almost any injury.
    Intangibility –
    Invisibility –
    Magic –
    Misting – Turning into mist
    Paralyze –
    Read memories of it's victims –
    Shapeshifting – taking on the appearance of other people or changing into a bat.
    Telekinesis – Manipulate objects/matter with the mind.
    Telepathy – Vampires can sometimes read/sense another person's thoughts, communicate with them mentally and/or influence their minds/thoughts.
    Unnatural Healing – To heal rapidly from any physical injury.
    Unnatural Senses – Vampires have uncanny senses.  They better sight, smell, hearing, taste, and sense of touch.
    Unnatural Speed – Vampires can move at faster than the human eye.
    Unnatural Strength – The power to exert great strength.
    Vision – Night/Heat or Blood flow

I have been working on a modern New England Horror game (not OSR so it isn't a d20 system or anything like that). With Vampires I initially went very Nosferatu, with them being a product of a pact with the Devil (the setting is steeped in that kind of lore). However I found I really needed the more charming Hollywood vampires as well to round things out. And I also found a lot of other places where I could fold in a lot of variants based on different events and urban legends. One that I drew on was the New England Vampire panic, which is a bit of a misnomer as the people panicking never called them vampires to my knowledge but the papers covering the event did. This one was based around consumption and vampires served as an explanation for why members of a household would follow one another to the grave. They are quite different and something I realized adding them as a variant is sometimes stripping away abilities and powers is just as useful as adding them or changing them.

Quote from: Aglondir on April 22, 2023, 08:38:24 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 22, 2023, 08:31:23 PM

Quote from: Aglondir on April 22, 2023, 07:59:29 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 22, 2023, 01:03:20 PM
Ok.

I ask again: Which approach would you like to see me tackle first?

Multiple strains (clans, bloodlines, families, whatever.)

Are you sure you don't mean multiple substrains? Multiple strains would be something like Nightlife and Nightcrawlers. Multiple substrains would be a VTM clone/heartbreaker.

Substrains, correct. I messed that up.

Ok, great.

As I mentioned in the other thread, this is structure used by VTM and its heartbreakers. I don't know if VTM invented it, as older RPGs like Chill and D&D used their Eurovampire as the template for other varieties and Tomb of Dracula might have done the same, but VTM certainly popularized it.

Under this structure, the vampires all use the same basic romanticized/simplified template (usually undead, drinks blood, allergic to sunlight) with various RPG classes (or skill-based equivalents) placed on top. VTM explains this as the result of all vampires descending from a single original vampire, whereas Everlasting instead has multiple founders who all independently contracted the same curse from an unknown source, VTR provides no canonical explanation and leaves it up to the GM, The Vampire - Alone in the Darkness instead has several tribes of "shadow demons" that reanimate the recently deceased as vampires (these demons do have geographical origins given because they're partly based on folklore, but what actually created them isn't explained), Vampyre Hack mentions "blood gods" as the origins of vampires but doesn't explain where the blood gods came from outside of unverifiable in-character myths and legends, and Strands of Power says nobody verifiably knows where vampires come from but invent plenty of explanations.

These games generally assume vampires typically come into existence by a vampire turning a mortal like a transmissible curse/pathogen, going all the way back to a hypothetical founder who wasn't turned by another vampire. This initiation process leads to vampires often organizing themselves into hierarchical families based on their shared lineage: vampire son, vampire dad, vampire grandpa, etc. Like any pathogen, they often display a genetic imperative to promote the propagation and continued existence of their bloodline.

Alone in the Darkness is unique in this respect: all vampires come into existence as the result of a shadow demon possessing and reanimating a corpse. These vampires cannot turn mortals into vampires on-demand, though they may make empty promises of this to lure familiars into service. They cannot form families in the conventional sense, at most they can form guilds based on shared skillsets, so they're more likely to fraternize with different castes.

I don't want to reinvent Alone in the Darkness, so I'm going to use transmissible vampirism; although I'm going to give different bloodlines different ways to transmit their vampirism. As a compromise I would include the option for vampires to join a different bloodline by swearing a magical blood oath to that bloodline (this is inspired by the Anita Blake vampires, and you might notice a similar rule appeared in VTR).

In my list of bloodlines linked in the OP, you'll notice I did something similar to Vampyre Hack by making the bloodlines directly comparable to VTM on a 1:1 basis. However, I think I took more liberty with the comparisons compared to Vampyre Hack. With VTM the classes are based on specific vampire media like Dracula, Interview with the Vampire or Necroscope, or even non-vampire media like Sazan Eyes. As the author of Vampyre Hack explained on his blog, they're based on an extremely weird collection of stereotypes. By contrast, Everlasting seemingly picked most of their inspiration out of an academic research book on vampire folklore: bloodlines get their themes based on their founder, like Dracula, Bathory, Kali, Lilith, the Moche creator god, etc. These games usually don't present more than a dozen bloodlines in their rulebooks, if that.

To get it out of the way now, I'm not going to have a fixed number of bloodlines. There could easily be hundreds, or there could just be three. I'll try to avoid forcing my bloodlines to fulfill arbitrary archetypes or stereotypes, as I feel that led to the problems afflicting VTM. The archetype approach works if you limit the number of bloodlines to no more than a half-dozen, but it breaks down the moment you try to add any more than that. For the purpose of comparison, I'll address both extremes.

If I'm emphasizing the game aspect and don't want extraneous moving parts, then it makes sense to limit the number of classes to three or so. We can classify their general themes by Hogwarts Houses: Gryffindor, Slytherin, and Ravenclaw. The Gryffindors are defined by passion, whether that be activist, lover or sailor. The Slytherins are defined by ambition: this is where you find socialites, puppet masters, and self-styled lords of the night. The Ravenclaws are defined by occultism: this is where you find wizards, necromancers, phantom thieves and psychic ninjas. This approach is great if you're making an actual video game, as it heavily reduces your overhead.

At the other extreme is having an unlimited number of bloodlines. Logistically there are probably only a few hundred bloodlines worldwide, but they're not all detailed in the rules so writers and groups have a lot of leeway to invent new ones as needed for adventures. This option is great for creative types who want to make a bunch of adventures and keep players on their toes by introducing unpredictable bloodlines, or satisfy players who want to play snowflakes. However, the downside is that you can pretty much say goodbye to any sense of what constitutes a "typical" adventure in terms of vampire society's composition. Every city and region's social composition would be essentially unique, unless you claim that a dozen or half-dozen classes constitute the majority and everything else is weird outlier. But I don't find that damper any fun.

When inventing bloodlines/classes willy-nilly, I like to imagine a few possible themes, think about where I want to take the class and then organize that into stories. For example, if I want a bloodline of blood bathers then I want to imagine where they came from and how that affects them. At the same time, I want to avoid falling into the silly trap of writing them as cookie cutter high school cliques. That got old for me. Unless they're actually organized into a secret society with a coherent goal, then it doesn't make sense for all vampires of the same class to think and act according to a standardized template. I don't want to encourage players to tell other players "You're playing your class wrong!"

Obviously, I'm never going to get it perfect. But I like to try anyway.

Every bloodline descends from a founder, someone who became a vampire in a way other than turned by another vampire. Maybe the founder was a deity who used their powers to turns their cultists into vampires. Maybe the founder committed atrocities and was damned (rewarded?) by some high power with a twisted sense of humor/irony. Maybe the founder swore vengeance on humanity with their dying breath and their wish was granted by non-specific dark powers. Maybe the founder sought out an archfiend to make a pact with Hell. Maybe they used black magic to turn themselves into a vampire or stole vampirism from another vampire. How ever the founder became a vampire, they went on to found their own bloodline.

Bloodlines can also be further divided by whether they're a mutation of an older bloodline. The older a bloodline is, the murkier its history and the harder it is to verify their origin, so this is as much GM tool as it is lore.

The founder of a bloodline is also its head vampire. If you kill a founder, then all their descendants will die with them... within some exceptions. A vampire who achieves a sufficiently high level will become a head vampire who generates their own animating force, so they and their descendants aren't reliant on another head vampire.

A vampire of a different bloodline can swear a magical blood oath to a head vampire in order to connect to their animating force. This allows the convert to gain the traits of that bloodline and to survive the destruction of their original head vampire. This is the explanation behind multiclassing, if that is used.

A vampire's level/XP is an abstract measurement of their general mystical power (and I guess mundane capacities, if you care). A vampire's XP can fluctuate for a variety of reasons, depending on the needs of the adventure. Your starting PC could have an elaborate backstory as an ancient vampire lord, but starts at level one because their power was lost due to magical injury, too much time in stasis, memory loss, or whatever other explanation you would like to use.

In Everlasting vampires start with a level equal to half that of the vampire that created them (inspired by Anne Rice, again), although at the same time those character creation rules assume that PCs started at a standard value. Your campaigns will probably have a starting level based on the needs of said campaign rather than automatically at 1 or whatever, so I'm leaving the lore behind this part vague for now until I had more concrete guidelines.

I'm not really a fan of intravampire cannibalism because I feel VTM fans turned into loony worshipers of the idea and I feel it distracts from the horror of vampires preying on muggles. So, taking a page from Everlasting (which takes its page from Anne Rice), vampires of higher XP can donate their XP to vampires of lower XP. In the setting, weaker vampires may serve stronger vampires in order to get XP donations and increase their own power, although this steadily weakens the donor because they're donating their own XP. Drinking the XP of higher-level vampires causes the drinker to develop an emotional addiction to that donor's XP specifically, which the donor can exploit to manipulate the drinker. When their respective XP eventually equalizes, this effect fades. The higher-level vampire may in turn desire to drink from the lower-level vampire: this doesn't cause the same emotional dependency, but vampires find blood play among each other extremely pleasurable to the point of addiction.

You can use a house rule to add VTM-style blood bonds, or to add a VTR-style elder vampires must feed on other vampires dynamic, but I'm not using those by default.

In order to maintain the horror of being a vampire (assuming your game is trying to maintain a serious somber horror atmosphere, and adjudicating the sliding scale of horror deserves its own post anyhow), vampires can only gain complete and balanced sustenance by sucking blood from a live human being (or a fresh human corpse). Assuming you care. Bagged blood rapidly loses its ability to provide nourishment, so vampires cannot buy blood bags from a corrupt hospital nurse and store them in their fridge for later. Sucking other vampires provides no nourishment, but to a vampire it feels at least as good as having sex does for the living (see above). Sucking animals can sustain a vampire physically, but their mind will slowly deteriorate to the level of an animal.

As with joining other bloodlines, vampires can suck each other in order to share their powers, a la Anne Rice. However, in order to discourage muchkinism and the dilution of classes, a vampire who makes a habit of sucking other vampires or swearing blood oaths will suffer from... (said in a spooky voice) mutation! Again, assuming you care. If you want to play Mary Sue the Vampiress who triple multi-classes then by all means do so.

I've been describing this in terms of a level-based system, and I'd like to say one thing about that before moving on. A humanity mechanic is untenable under this structure, or even a skill-based system for that matter. The simple fact of the matter is you don't have a choice between playing a vampire versus a human (or vampire trying to be human). Unless the system is built around a darkside/lightside mechanic where advancement in human traits or vampire traits are mutually exclusive (like in Feed), then it becomes a game of supervillain versus superhero with a vampire theme. Nothing wrong with that, as several of my ideas for splats are vampire superheroes, but I must point it out because this has a direct effect on the horror atmosphere (if any) and ludonarrative harmony/dissonance. As I've said before, VTM has a ton of ludonarrative dissonance in this regard because it ignores the obvious transhumanist supervillain/superhero dichotomy that underlies it.

As for an actual listing and writeups of classes/bloodlines... well, you've seen my lists of ideas and those of others. Some concepts aren't really appropriate for player characters, like that one coven of creepy identical-looking child vampires that use liberal mind control to make adults take care of them.

I actually don't know where to start with writeups. What classes are available to your players is going to depend on what your want your campaigns to be about. I've spent a lot of time on this post already so I'm going end it here and await your advice. Hope you enjoy!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 23, 2023, 01:07:11 PM

Quote from: Aglondir on April 22, 2023, 08:38:24 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 22, 2023, 08:31:23 PM

Quote from: Aglondir on April 22, 2023, 07:59:29 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 22, 2023, 01:03:20 PM
Ok.

I ask again: Which approach would you like to see me tackle first?

Multiple strains (clans, bloodlines, families, whatever.)

Are you sure you don't mean multiple substrains? Multiple strains would be something like Nightlife and Nightcrawlers. Multiple substrains would be a VTM clone/heartbreaker.

Substrains, correct. I messed that up.

Ok, great... <snip>... I'm going end it here and await your advice. Hope you enjoy!

Maybe next time, chop that into different posts! (LOL)

Founder/Origin
I don't have any strong opinions here; all of your ideas are good. But there is one idea on my No list: No humans merged with demons. White Wolf tried this at least three times (Mummy, Demon, Geist) and it fell flat each time.

Transmission
I prefer a single way to create vampires, for simplicity's sake.  As for joining a bloodline after swearing an oath, it robs the game of some of the fatalism I like, but I'd have to see your specifics.

Bloodlines
I agree that VTM was all over the place. I like the Everlasting approach (founder-based) and don't like the Gurps Bloodlines approach (worldwide folklore-based.) There's also the game-based approach, where the bloodlines are based on what players do in the game (fighter, magic user, rogue, etc.)  but that may be too meta for your tastes. I'm not in favor of sub-bloodlines (sub-substrains?) Again, keep it simple.

Number of Bloodlines
I prefer a fixed number, 5 to 9. Less is too limiting; more is too dizzying. Sure it can lead to stereotypes, but it solves the "know your role" issue. Allowing players to create bloodlines is terrible. It will result in snowflakes and world dissolution (as you point out) and also munchkin-ism.

Gryffindor, Slytherin, and Ravenclaw
This is great! But three is not enough. Again, 5 to 9.

Advancement
The donating XP (etc.) model is too convoluted for me, but maybe you can make it work. For my own game (and at this point I have probably forked down a path you don't wish to go) is class/level based. Class = bloodline, Level = power/age. Players normally start at Level 1 (newly turned) but you could start at Level 15 if you wanted to play a vampire from 1307.

Vampire cannibalism
Yeah, I'm not a fan of VTM's Diablerie either, but I do like it when ancient vampires must hunt other vampires. Instant badguys! And that's going to be a challenge—who are your badguys? If the answer is another supernatural (werewolves, demons, Cthulu, etc.) then you're going to end up with an Urban Fantasy game. Someone is going to demand to play one of those. Happens every time.

Darkside/lightside mechanic
I've never seen this produce anything but arguments, whether it is VTM's humanity, Star Wars' dark side, or D&D's alignments. BUT I do love the idea of "becoming more of a vampire means becoming less of a human" which sounds like what Feed is doing. Not "Oh noes, I killed someone and that's wrong, I lose a point of something" but "When I gained the ability to turn into a wolf, I lost my taste for human food."

My advice
Your writeups of bloodlines is excellent. I'd recommend picking 5 to 9 of your favorites, matching it up to a rules system, and seeing where it goes from there. I think you can probably sense that the game I'd like is about 90-degrees off from your ideas, so I'm going to hold off on any criticism or feedback, unless you ask a specific question.

I'm typing on my phone so I can't respond to your points individually yet. All my ideas are still in flux. If you think a particular mechanic won't work, then removing it would be the obvious solution. I'm not attached to stuff like the XP donation, so dropping it would be fine if you agree.

VTR does the 5–9 splat structure you suggest. I find that its additions are more or less unjustifiable. The Ventrue, Mekhet and Gangrel are directly comparable to the Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Gryffindor respectively. Daeva is a mix of Gryffindor and Slytherin. Nosferatu is "you got hit by the ugly stick." Julii are Slytherin, Akhud are Ravenclaw. I can't really justify to myself doing more than the three, but I can try if I had a really convincing foundation for it.

For comparison, I really like how Nephilim used the classical elements/humors (plus a fifth element of Moon) as the foundation for its splats. These elements had a lot of cultural cache to draw from, while also being broad enough to avoid pigeonholing. You think the five elements would work here? Or something else maybe?

One idea I didn't bring up last post was this: instead of bloodlines having talents with multiple sets of powers, one idea I saw elsewhere (Vampire: Undeath, yes I know it's terrible but it has some ideas) was that all vampires have access to a common suite of powers and each bloodline has one unique talent. The common suite of powers would include physical augmentation, supernatural movement (wallcrawling, levitation, flight, short range teleportation, etc) and personal magnetism. An interesting idea I saw in Everlasting is that every bloodline has affinity with different animals when it comes to commanding animals or shapeshifting, rather than shapeshifting being the shtick of a single bloodline. Everlasting does something similar with magic, giving several bloodlines unique magical styles based on their cultural heritage rather than making a single wizard bloodline.

Quote from: Aglondir on April 23, 2023, 05:58:16 PM
Founder/Origin
I don't have any strong opinions here; all of your ideas are good. But there is one idea on my No list: No humans merged with demons. White Wolf tried this at least three times (Mummy, Demon, Geist) and it fell flat each time.

Alone in the Darkness takes a different approach from those. The demons are a plot device that explain certain aspects of vampirism. They're not characters, they don't have personalities, they don't have backstories... the original human personality and memories are still in control, albeit warped by the demon's hunger for blood. I also think the demonic possession angle better explains why vampires of the same caste display trends in their behavior that cannot be explained solely by their demonic talents.

QuoteTransmission
I prefer a single way to create vampires, for simplicity's sake.  As for joining a bloodline after swearing an oath, it robs the game of some of the fatalism I like, but I'd have to see your specifics.

The transmission rules won't be very detailed. I just find the homogeneity boring after a while. Vampyre Hack has this interesting rule where only one of the classes starts with the ability to create new vampires, whereas others have to learn it during play. I thought that was interesting and want to further explore that. But it's largely a fluff thing. Much of the time different methods will be cosmetic, probably, but in other cases the ritual would be vital in explaining aspects of how the class's associated secret society functions. For example, a bloodline who became vampires using a magic ritual have to perform the same ritual every time they initiate a new member and this creates a bottleneck that their leaders use to maintain tighter control. Another contrasting example would be a bloodline entirely of self-made vampires who all independently recreate the same necromantic ritual: they don't have a tightly nit fraternity structure and operate more like subscribers and contributors to a scientific journal.

Joining another bloodline is more or less just an explanation for multiclassing, kits/subclasses, or prestige classes, but only if those are allowed.

QuoteBloodlines
I agree that VTM was all over the place. I like the Everlasting approach (founder-based) and don't like the Gurps Bloodlines approach (worldwide folklore-based.) There's also the game-based approach, where the bloodlines are based on what players do in the game (fighter, magic user, rogue, etc.)  but that may be too meta for your tastes. I'm not in favor of sub-bloodlines (sub-substrains?) Again, keep it simple.

Everlasting technically uses a hybrid of the two. Most of the bloodlines are based on real vampire folklore, like the nosferatus, obayifo, lilitu, etc.

It's not too meta for my tastes. It is a game, so designing classes that way may be more helpful than something vague and wishy-washy.

The sublines thing is pure fluff. I'm not gonna add an additional set of rules for it where you take a second prestige class that requires another prestige class; that is just ridiculous. At most it will be an explanation for where subclasses or class variants come from.

QuoteNumber of Bloodlines
I prefer a fixed number, 5 to 9. Less is too limiting; more is too dizzying. Sure it can lead to stereotypes, but it solves the "know your role" issue. Allowing players to create bloodlines is terrible. It will result in snowflakes and world dissolution (as you point out) and also munchkin-ism.

I'm not gonna be able to stop groups from wanting snowflakes. I read B.J. Zanzibar's archives. I figure that I might as well account for it rather than pretend it will never come up. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. Content creep is really hard to avoid.

QuoteGryffindor, Slytherin, and Ravenclaw
This is great! But three is not enough. Again, 5 to 9.

See my last post.

QuoteAdvancement
The donating XP (etc.) model is too convoluted for me, but maybe you can make it work. For my own game (and at this point I have probably forked down a path you don't wish to go) is class/level based. Class = bloodline, Level = power/age. Players normally start at Level 1 (newly turned) but you could start at Level 15 if you wanted to play a vampire from 1307.

As I said, I'm not attached to this mechanic. I can just drop it entirely.

I don't want to put in a strict correlation between level and in-character age. I feel that can be too restrictive and nonsensical. If the campaign starts in contemporary times and don't move very far into the future, then the PCs achieving high levels would break any attempt at correspondence between level and in-character age. If there's no strict correlation, then a starting PC could have a backstory as a centuries old vampire but still be level 1 for whatever reason (injury, laziness, luck, etc).

QuoteVampire cannibalism
Yeah, I'm not a fan of VTM's Diablerie either, but I do like it when ancient vampires must hunt other vampires. Instant badguys! And that's going to be a challenge—who are your badguys? If the answer is another supernatural (werewolves, demons, Cthulu, etc.) then you're going to end up with an Urban Fantasy game. Someone is going to demand to play one of those. Happens every time.

I do think cannibals can work purely as antagonists. I have this idea where some vampires just lose interest in being part of any society and turn into pure nightmare monsters that live on the periphery of civilization and eat any unfortunate mortals or vampires they happen across. This isn't like VTM's feral beast degeneration thing, these nightmare monsters can still possess the same intellect they had in life they just don't value temporal power or social interaction anymore. Some can be packs of feral beasts by an alpha, if desired.

If other magical creatures exist, then they're limited to NPCs or are integrated into the rules as PC options who freely fraternize with the others Nightlife style. But the latter would require (re)designing the setting and rules from a new/different starting point.

QuoteDarkside/lightside mechanic
I've never seen this produce anything but arguments, whether it is VTM's humanity, Star Wars' dark side, or D&D's alignments. BUT I do love the idea of "becoming more of a vampire means becoming less of a human" which sounds like what Feed is doing. Not "Oh noes, I killed someone and that's wrong, I lose a point of something" but "When I gained the ability to turn into a wolf, I lost my taste for human food."

Yes. I'm glad you like it. The rules in that game were built around this premise from the ground up, so they're much more abstracted compared to other rule systems. It's a pure skill-based system: there's no separate attribute scores or wealth bonuses or status ranks, everything is represented by freeform skills. The downside is that the rules simply don't support concepts like vampires getting more powerful with age because there's no real leveling, but the game isn't about accumulating XP and loot so I don't consider this a big loss. Gaining vampire traits turns into you into more and more of a supervillain compared to other vampires, yes, but that's unrelated to in-character age and the book explicitly states that starting PCs can have backstories as centuries old vamps without adjusting their stats due to the abstraction. Anne Rice only added power levels when started writing Lestat as a Gary Stu, so I think the idea can be safely discounted if it doesn't work with the intended themes.

QuoteMy advice
Your writeups of bloodlines is excellent. I'd recommend picking 5 to 9 of your favorites, matching it up to a rules system, and seeing where it goes from there. I think you can probably sense that the game I'd like is about 90-degrees off from your ideas, so I'm going to hold off on any criticism or feedback, unless you ask a specific question.

I've have a few favorites, but the concepts are often redundant. I have at least two classes with the same vampire superhero shtick flavored for different cultures. Maybe it would make sense to decouple class role from vampire strain? For example, instead of having multiple classes with variants of the lord shtick, you have a single archetypal Vampire Lord class and then different subclasses (or races?) for different bloodlines. While they'd use the same class chassis, this wouldn't represent a shared heritage like say VTR does with its five classes (while I think the idea makes sense mechanically and as a way to organize splats and better inform players of the class roles, the fluff implementation was arbitrarily restrictive and resulted in the writers shoehorning weird workarounds to get certain concepts to fit).

Let me know what you think.

I haven't seen it implemented in any ttrpgs other than that awful Vampire: Undeath, but an interesting idea I've seen pop up in vampire fiction in the last couple decades or so is the idea that vampires can read the memories of their victims or each other when they drink their blood. I don't know exactly how far back the idea goes (some form of the idea is present in Anne Rice's Interview novel), but the Netflix/BBC Dracula series makes it a vital plot point. It summarizes the concept as "blood is lives." Lives plural, not life collectively. I.e. they eat souls.

The Underworld movies use it in some scenes, but as a plot device that isn't really explored.

Netflix Dracula gets a lot of mileage out of the idea. Vampires have to be careful about who they eat or the accumulated memories can drive them crazy, apparently. They can steal skills and knowledge, such as learning new languages instantly. They can share memories the same way. Dracula accumulated some of his psychological weaknesses this way, like his aversion to crosses. He explains it as eating too many Christians who were afraid of the cross (the plot was written by a militant atheist apparently).

Christians derive comfort from the cross, not fear. It would make more sense if he had internalized fear because Christians derive comfort from it: it warped into him fearing it due to their belief it protects them from him. Or he despises the feeling of comfort. Whatever.

Vampire: Undeath does something similar. PCs can steal skills this way, although only temporarily. Vampires gradually accumulate memories from their many victims over time, which stresses them out and causes insanity. Older vampires make new vampires for two reasons related to this: the process allows them to learn about the modern world from the new vampire's memories, while the older vamp can simultaneously offload their excess memories onto the new vampire.

It's an interesting idea. That said, it might not be appropriate or relevant to typical gameplay. Let me know what you think.

Great thread indeed!

I like traditional(ish) vampires for their powers, etc. But more on the darker side of things. Salem's Lot, Near Dark, etc. Basically, any cool thing you see in a movie I've pinched.

I'm currently trying a more Lovecraftian approach for their origin, however. Because I like the cosmic horror element and the idea of different Sects as opposed to different tribes. Because I want to avoid a clumsy meta-plot.

In my own urban fantasy attempts, I've tied each of my vampire bloodlines to one of the Seven Deadly Sins (and ergo, to a demon their founder made a pact with at some point in history). The sexy Anne Rice vampires made their pact with Ishtar/Lust. Dracula learned from Satan himself and so is linked to Pride, etc.

Each type has its own infernal gifts and banes based on the Sin they are tied to. They turn others by feeding them their blood over a series of days with the blood weakening the victim's resistance to their sin. Once they are fully engulfed by the sin (typically taking about thee days) they either kill them so they rise as one of their line or turn them into a slave bound to the vampire by the chains of that sin (but unlike Masquerade's ghouls are not immortal, nor do they gain powers from this... they're just mortals in thrall to a sin).

Dhampirs in this are essentially spiritual antibodies, born of a mortal and a new/weak vampire. They have a degree of the vampire's enhanced abilities, but also, like an antibody, has great resilience to vampiric powers (particularly those of their parent's bloodline).

Vampiric power is purely a function of the degree to which they embrace their sin. The more they indulge and partake in it the stronger they become, but conversely, the more bound by it they become.

As an RPG element I'd essentially tie vampiric power to the morality scale... the more sinful you are the more powerful you can become, but the more inhuman their restrictions become.

For example, the deeper into Pride a vampire falls the greater their physical and mental abilities become, but the weaker they get during the light of day and the more "worthy" those they feed upon must become for them to gain nourishment.

Similarly, the deeper into Wrath they fall the greater their powers to become like and control predatory beasts becomes, but the less control over their higher selves and more savage their feeding becomes.

Thus, Vampire PCs would have to toe the line between the power they need to survive and the banes of falling deeper into Sin.

In terms of origin, there would be multiple bloodlines, each descended from figures known or unknown who made a pact with a demon for their power. Cain may have indeed been the first vampire in this because he was the first to murder and reject God, but he committed nowhere near the atrocities of later monsters and, if he even still exists, likely pales in comparison to the likes of Vlad the Impaler.

And before you ask, no Hitler isn't a vampire. No existing vampire would want the competition in turning him and to become the founder of a vampiric line requires a deep dive into the occult and the enactment of horrific rites to break the new founder of their old life and bind them to the demon's will.

In addition, though both are difficult, there would be two ways to end the curse of vampirism. The first is to radically turn from sin and embrace the opposing virtue to such a degree that it wipes the vice from you.

This isn't just, give a hungry person a meal and you're free of Greed... this would be the radical divestment of all material goods to charity and then continuing to work while giving everything to charity for possibly a lifetime before the curse is wiped clean.

The second is to find and kill the founder of your bloodline; whereupon all of that line revert to mortality. Killing a non-founder only frees any of its mortal thralls from their slavery.

* * * *

Basically, you'd have seven primary "strains" though each of those likely has multiple founders (Dracula isn't the only mortal who swore himself to Satan/Pride, just the most well known... indeed his hubris was such that he inspired Stoker to write about him and thus make his name known to the masses as THE vampire).

Each strain would have certain core powers and banes tied to their linked sin. Each would also have something akin a "hierarchy of sin" to determine how much power they can attain and what degree their banes affect them.

By sharing blood vampires can take on other supernatural sins and their powers and banes in accord with its hierarchy of sins.

* * * *

Anyway, that's my (Sears Tower) elevator pitch for a take on urban fantasy vampires.

Quote from: Chris2460Anyway, that's my (Sears Tower) elevator pitch for a take on urban fantasy vampires

Love it! It hits alot of notes that resonate with me (Chritianity, seperate demon founders makes sense, turning, behavior, redemption...) Nice work.

But I'm having trouble picturing a few of the bloodlines-- what they look like and what they do. Pride, wrath, greed, lust... perfect. But what do envy vampires do? Do sloth vampires do anything at all? Are gluttony vampires like Baron Harkonnen?

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 25, 2023, 08:57:31 AM
Vampiric power is purely a function of the degree to which they embrace their sin. The more they indulge and partake in it the stronger they become, but conversely, the more bound by it they become.

This is essentially how vampirism operates in Feed BTW. Vampiric traits are quite powerful, but the more vampiric a character becomes then the worse their Hunger can get, the harder time they'll have resisting indulging, and the less human traits they have to do human things. It doesn't have the more personalized approach you describe here (except for the bit about losing human functionality), but the rules are simple and flexible enough that you could add something like this onto the existing rules. You could customize the temptations and compulsions for each strain, or have every vampiric trait inflict a new thematic weakness.