Quote from: Aglondir on April 25, 2023, 01:49:12 PM

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?

Envy is the desire to be in someone else's shoes so they're the shapeshifters who can also steal the memories of others, but are plagued by obsessive behavior (ie. classic stalking naturally but also the sort of OCD behavior that has them counting spilled grains of rice). They don't just steal your life by drinking from you... they steal your LIFE from you.

Sloth vampires become more resilient in mind and body, gain powers related to dream and sleep, but suffer the bane of daysleep that is increasingly hard to shake.

Gluttons gain the ability to feed on more than just blood so long as it is tied to life in some reasonable way; flesh, breath, years of someone's life; and gain the strengths of their victims, but are cursed with ever more insatiable hunger and the weaknesses of their victims as well.

I don't know how it 100% rolls in Christianity, but I feel Gluttony can be more than just eating. It can be about different forms of hedonistic behavior and sensory overload.

Lust on the other hand is about wanting things you shouldn't have (as opposed to hating others for having them). So they could include power-hungry demon summoners and pacters with demons and the like. As well as being the sexiest (maybe).

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 25, 2023, 04:46:31 PM

Quote from: Aglondir on April 25, 2023, 01:49:12 PM

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?

Envy is the desire to be in someone else's shoes so they're the shapeshifters who can also steal the memories of others, but are plagued by obsessive behavior (ie. classic stalking naturally but also the sort of OCD behavior that has them counting spilled grains of rice). They don't just steal your life by drinking from you... they steal your LIFE from you.

Sloth vampires become more resilient in mind and body, gain powers related to dream and sleep, but suffer the bane of daysleep that is increasingly hard to shake.

Gluttons gain the ability to feed on more than just blood so long as it is tied to life in some reasonable way; flesh, breath, years of someone's life; and gain the strengths of their victims, but are cursed with ever more insatiable hunger and the weaknesses of their victims as well.

I must be an Envy vampire, since I wish I had thought of this (LOL)

Any chance you could writeup a few sentences about each of the 7 bloodlines?

I like the idea of the 7 deadly sins.

Quote from: Aglondir on April 25, 2023, 06:28:43 PM
Any chance you could writeup a few sentences about each of the 7 bloodlines?

Alrighty, here goes.

Vampires embodying the sin of Pride see their physical and mental attributes greatly heightened to beyond mortal levels. Their weakness is they lose these abilities or even find their baseline abilities hindered in the daytime (i.e. their pride is only justified in the dark of night... in the harsh light of day they're nothing special). Their bloodline founders swear fealty to Satan himself, the great dragon, and so I would label this type the Dracul (Vlad Tepes being the archetypal 'Dracula').

The sin of Wrath brings out feral impulses that allow the vampire to take on animal-like traits and command savage beasts. Their weakness is an underlying rage that grows with their embrace of sin.

The sin of Lust grants a vampire powers of emotional manipulation and inhuman beauty with the weakness of being a growing emotional deadness (outside of rage if they have gained the sin of wrath) outside of sheer depravity as the pleasures of the flesh become too mundane to stimulate them.

The sin of Greed grants a vampire telekinetic control over objects (all material goods belong to them) and an insatiable hunger to possess and flaunt material goods.

As mentioned, the sin of Envy produces a vampire who doesn't just take your life when they feed, they can take your LIFE by adopting the form and stealing the memories of those they feed upon. Their weakness though is obsession and stalker-ish behavior towards those they envy.

The sin of Gluttony allows the vampire to consume anything related to life and take on aspects of what they consume (you are what you eat). They are cursed with insatiable hunger far beyond that of normal vampires.

The sin of Sloth grants a vampire both incredible resilience (resistance to change) and command over dreams and sleep (at high levels they can even feed on victims through their dreams), but suffer from lethargy in daytime that at higher levels is practically indistinguishable from death.

IIRC Requiem Chronicler's Guide did something like this. One of the minisettings associated each of the five clans with one of the seven deadly sins. Since this was adhoc, the association wasn't airtight and two sins didn't have clans. I don't have the book on hand so I can't check the associations, but I don't think that matters anyway.

A conceptual problem I have with the seven deadly sins is that they're fairly arbitrary. Why seven? Why those specifically? I've seen Despair, Vanity and Doubt named as 8th-10th sins, including in rpg blogs. Their scopes are fairly narrow, to such a degree that I've seen many treatments that expand their scope, including in this very thread. The problem with that is it causes the expanded sins to overlap, and trying to protect their expanded niches results in adding more arbitrary distinctions to keep them from overlapping.

This is particularly a problem with Lust, Greed, and Gluttony. These three are essentially the same sin of materialistic indulgence, more so than the other sins, but focusing on different targets. In their original conceptions Lust is the indulgence of sex, Greed the indulgence of money, and Gluttony the indulgence of food. Removing their specific targets causes them to blur together, so you have to add new arbitrary distinctions to maintain the difference. To the degree that you'd need a question and answer flowchart to track which acts constitute which sin, which just makes using the seven deadly sins pointlessly complicated.

Even Wrath is just the indulgence of violence. Dante bizarrely decided to add a Circle of Violence to Hell in addition to the Circle of Wrath, which feels really arbitrary to me. How can one be Wrathful without being violent? Psychological violence may not inflict physical wounds, but it's still violence. Yelling at and insulting someone on a regular basis is obviously violent. Simply being angry all the time but having the willpower and habit to keep it under wraps might fit the bill, but is suppressing violent urges because you know better really sufficient to constitute a sin? That just seems like arbitrarily punishing people for not being Buddhist monks.

Chronicles of Darkness 1e suffered from this in spades, especially since they didn't bother to provide concrete examples. Lust was explained as a vague "victimizing others to get what you want" without specifying sexuality, and one NPC had their statblock specify their vice was "lust for beauty, not sex" (which implied Lust was about sex by default, which the virtue rules didn't specify). Some were vague and wishy-washy to the point of being incomprehensible. How does your PC "forge meaning from chaos" and on a sufficiently regular basis to justify picking that virtue? Although the fandom, as usual, only focused on how offended they were that Christian symbolism was used. Never mind that the virtues they used were the theological and cardinal virtues that originated from pagan thought co-opted by the Catholic Church, not the seven heavenly virtues. 2e simply replaced it with "invent your own virtues," which also broke any rules that relied on characters having specific virtues (such as, oh, the entire book on demons where their powers were themed after the seven deadly sins and even rated these as statistics) and made the entire concept of any rules reliant on specific virtues untenable, essentially defeating the point of having a defined virtue/vice mechanic in the first place. Oh, and all the games other than the core mortals game didn't use virtues/vices at all and just replaced it with nature/demeanor from World of Darkness. You can well imagine why I left that fandom and haven't cracked open any of the books in a decade.

To be fair, Catholic doctrine actually makes those sins much more distinct.

Greed, for example, isn't the desire for worldly things (if it were the starving man sins by desiring food), rather it is the hoarding of material goods past one's needs and neglecting the needs of others. It is all about acquisition. It is the sin against charity.

Gluttony, by contrast is all about consumption; of desire for pleasure resulting in the wasting goods that would be better used for other purposes. Of note, gluttony can include overindulgence in sexual appetites as well.

Finally, Lust isn't sexual desire. God gave us sexual desire to fulfill one of our purposes (be fruitful and multiply). Rather it is in objectifying others, focusing on using them to fulfill your desires, rather than focusing on fulfilling the other's needs. Again, lust is not just sexual, but any time we treat people as tools to achieve our ends.

It is banal pop culture that has watered down the terms to be similar... but language evolves so perhaps the names of the deadly sins must as well; perhaps the sins of Hoarding, Waste and Objectification would make the distinctions more clear.

ETA: Vanity is just Pride by a different name. Similarly, Sloth is defined in Catholic doctrine as not 'laziness' but spiritual despair and apathy... so despair/doubt are covered by it.

People keep trying to pretend they've invented new modes of behavior, but almost invariably it's something very old given a different coat of paint.

ETA2: it's seven because in Christian symbolism it represents "totality." Specifically four (the material world; four elements, four seasons, four directions, four humours, etc.) + three (the spiritual world; the trinity particularly for Christians).

This is also why twelve (three x four) is significant and has a similar meaning of completeness.

Seven is also likely because it's about the limit of elements you can hold in your short term memory at the same time.

Renaming them to more appropriate words makes sense... but then you run into the problem of losing the immediate identification with the seven deadly sins. But whatever.

As for the other three sins being redundant... well, the treatment I linked to added them in order to maintain the nine circles of Hell. Ditching Dante's lower levels for not fitting the seven deadly sins requires adding two more sins to meet the nine circle quota, and at that point a tenth circle/sin doesn't sound so odd. Over in the comments someone asks the author to explain the additional sins in more detail and he said this:

QuoteI think the additional three sins can be seen as derivatives of others, but the 10 Sin format fits the classic 9 Hells of D&D (Or 9 + Lucifer's Prison) much better than a 7 Sin format and I strongly believe that the Devils of D&D SHOULD be linked to the sins otherwise you miss a massive opportunity to give them more character and personality.

I mean the various Devils as they stand basically mean nothing. They are just monsters. By giving them a stronger identity linked to the sins we create far more interesting role-playing opportunities. So Demons are the corruption of the physical; whereas Devils are the corruption of the spiritual.

As regards various subsets (suicide under rage instead of despair) I was probably working from established lists I have found rather than thinking each through individually. HOWEVER, there is nothing to say there couldn't be a Rage Devil associated with Suicide AS WELL AS a Despair Devil associated with Suicide.

QuoteAs regards the other 3 sins 'standing out'. From a physical level that's easy since I already listed energy types, colours, animals and so forth.

On an environmental level:

– Sloth: Swamp or thick undergrowth that always seems to slow your progress to the destination that always seems on the horizon.
– Despair: Dismal 'blank' area devoid of colour (black and white) with sobbing or wailing noises in the background, voices whispering there is no hope.
– Discouragement: Battlements and Defenses sometimes arrayed in multiplicity (ie. a Castle on top of a Castle), Murder Holes everywhere. Voices telling you to turn back, go away, only death awaits here, you have no chance of victory.

Secondary effects could be:

– Sloth: Leading to Filth (setting it in opposition to Vanity) and thus also disease; possible connection to the Daemons.
– Despair: Leading to Suicide (setting it in opposition to Lust perhaps)
– Discouragement: Leading to Prison/Punishment. While the Hells are themselves a 'prison' of sorts, The discouragement sin must always be the most draconian and least compromising. Perhaps the most lawful of the Hells, setting it in opposition to Wrath which is potentially the least lawful.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 26, 2023, 11:44:01 AM
Chronicles of Darkness 1e suffered from this in spades, especially since they didn't bother to provide concrete examples. Lust was explained as a vague "victimizing others to get what you want" without specifying sexuality, and one NPC had their statblock specify their vice was "lust for beauty, not sex" (which implied Lust was about sex by default, which the virtue rules didn't specify). Some were vague and wishy-washy to the point of being incomprehensible. How does your PC "forge meaning from chaos" and on a sufficiently regular basis to justify picking that virtue?

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 26, 2023, 01:08:09 PM
Lust isn't sexual desire. God gave us sexual desire to fulfill one of our purposes (be fruitful and multiply). Rather it is in objectifying others, focusing on using them to fulfill your desires, rather than focusing on fulfilling the other's needs. Again, lust is not just sexual, but any time we treat people as tools to achieve our ends.

It is banal pop culture that has watered down the terms to be similar... but language evolves so perhaps the names of the deadly sins must as well; perhaps the sins of Hoarding, Waste and Objectification would make the distinctions more clear.

To me, the explanation of lust just illustrates BoxCrayonTales' point about the deadly sins being vague in execution. Not talking to one's Uber driver as a person is objectification, for example. However, it's super unclear to call that the Sin of Lust. That's not language drift - it's always been a lack of clarity.

To me, deadly sins vampires seem like a hook maybe for a set of seven vampire individuals as monsters of the week or a team -- but they don't feel like they have enough meat on them to be a large world faction or PC option. My impression of this thread is that it's a replacement for White Wolf's vampire games -- so the vampire types should be interesting as PCs. Or is this more general about how to make vampires as interesting villains for games? I just had a vampire as the main villain of my last two D&D games, so I'd be curious about the latter.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 26, 2023, 02:13:43 PM
Renaming them to more appropriate words makes sense... but then you run into the problem of losing the immediate identification with the seven deadly sins. But whatever.

As for the other three sins being redundant... well, the treatment I linked to added them in order to maintain the nine circles of Hell. Ditching Dante's lower levels for not fitting the seven deadly sins requires adding two more sins to meet the nine circle quota, and at that point a tenth circle/sin doesn't sound so odd. Over in the comments someone asks the author to explain the additional sins in more detail and he said this:

QuoteI think the additional three sins can be seen as derivatives of others, but the 10 Sin format fits the classic 9 Hells of D&D (Or 9 + Lucifer's Prison) much better than a 7 Sin format and I strongly believe that the Devils of D&D SHOULD be linked to the sins otherwise you miss a massive opportunity to give them more character and personality.

I mean the various Devils as they stand basically mean nothing. They are just monsters. By giving them a stronger identity linked to the sins we create far more interesting role-playing opportunities. So Demons are the corruption of the physical; whereas Devils are the corruption of the spiritual.

As regards various subsets (suicide under rage instead of despair) I was probably working from established lists I have found rather than thinking each through individually. HOWEVER, there is nothing to say there couldn't be a Rage Devil associated with Suicide AS WELL AS a Despair Devil associated with Suicide.

QuoteAs regards the other 3 sins 'standing out'. From a physical level that's easy since I already listed energy types, colours, animals and so forth.

On an environmental level:

– Sloth: Swamp or thick undergrowth that always seems to slow your progress to the destination that always seems on the horizon.
– Despair: Dismal 'blank' area devoid of colour (black and white) with sobbing or wailing noises in the background, voices whispering there is no hope.
– Discouragement: Battlements and Defenses sometimes arrayed in multiplicity (ie. a Castle on top of a Castle), Murder Holes everywhere. Voices telling you to turn back, go away, only death awaits here, you have no chance of victory.

Secondary effects could be:

– Sloth: Leading to Filth (setting it in opposition to Vanity) and thus also disease; possible connection to the Daemons.
– Despair: Leading to Suicide (setting it in opposition to Lust perhaps)
– Discouragement: Leading to Prison/Punishment. While the Hells are themselves a 'prison' of sorts, The discouragement sin must always be the most draconian and least compromising. Perhaps the most lawful of the Hells, setting it in opposition to Wrath which is potentially the least lawful.

You're aware that Dante's Inferno is a novel and not theological text right?

In your fantasy you can work whatever into it, but saying that it's in a novel doesn't prove the Christian theology wrong.

If I base my fantasy on Christian theology I don't have to change it to accommodate a novel or what some writer of a different fantasy did. Especially since he himself recognizes his shit is redundant.

Quote from: jhkim on April 26, 2023, 02:32:18 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 26, 2023, 11:44:01 AM
Chronicles of Darkness 1e suffered from this in spades, especially since they didn't bother to provide concrete examples. Lust was explained as a vague "victimizing others to get what you want" without specifying sexuality, and one NPC had their statblock specify their vice was "lust for beauty, not sex" (which implied Lust was about sex by default, which the virtue rules didn't specify). Some were vague and wishy-washy to the point of being incomprehensible. How does your PC "forge meaning from chaos" and on a sufficiently regular basis to justify picking that virtue?

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 26, 2023, 01:08:09 PM
Lust isn't sexual desire. God gave us sexual desire to fulfill one of our purposes (be fruitful and multiply). Rather it is in objectifying others, focusing on using them to fulfill your desires, rather than focusing on fulfilling the other's needs. Again, lust is not just sexual, but any time we treat people as tools to achieve our ends.

It is banal pop culture that has watered down the terms to be similar... but language evolves so perhaps the names of the deadly sins must as well; perhaps the sins of Hoarding, Waste and Objectification would make the distinctions more clear.

To me, the explanation of lust just illustrates BoxCrayonTales' point about the deadly sins being vague in execution. Not talking to one's Uber driver as a person is objectification, for example. However, it's super unclear to call that the Sin of Lust. That's not language drift - it's always been a lack of clarity.

To me, deadly sins vampires seem like a hook maybe for a set of seven vampire individuals as monsters of the week or a team -- but they don't feel like they have enough meat on them to be a large world faction or PC option. My impression of this thread is that it's a replacement for White Wolf's vampire games -- so the vampire types should be interesting as PCs. Or is this more general about how to make vampires as interesting villains for games? I just had a vampire as the main villain of my last two D&D games, so I'd be curious about the latter.

Care to explain exactly how not talking to the Uber driver means I'm breaking my and his chastity?

You forget that for each of the seven deadly sins there's an opposing virtue. The sin is indulging in the opposite of said virtue.

In the case of Lust it's about extramarital sex, the constant desire and indulgence in the pleasures of sex for the sole purpose of the pleasure without consideration for anyone/anything else.

Lust, Gluttony and Avarice (Greed) are all about the excess. God gave us sexual desire in order to be fruitful and multiply not to engage in empty sex with anyone we fancy. Eating and drinking are things we need to do to survive, so just doing that isn't a sin either, but doing it in excess, being wasteful is. Greed is about the accumulation of possessions/wealth for the sake of it, without ever being satisfied by any amount.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 26, 2023, 02:34:22 PM
You're aware that Dante's Inferno is a novel and not theological text right?

In your fantasy you can work whatever into it, but saying that it's in a novel doesn't prove the Christian theology wrong.

If I base my fantasy on Christian theology I don't have to change it to accommodate a novel or what some writer of a different fantasy did. Especially since he himself recognizes his shit is redundant.

Also of note is that the 1st Circle is actually akin to the Greek Underworld... not a place of punishment, but a place to exist for all the souls of virtuous pagans who never knew God out of ignorance and conditions beyond their control. They didn't come to God through Christ so the theology of the time said they couldn't be in Heaven, but Dante didn't want them punished for something beyond their control so gave those figures the afterlife their cultures believed in. In more recent theological works its become more accepted that while we might be limited by the sacraments, God's mercy and power is not and so he could have saved the virtuous pagans at their death and thus they'd be Heaven and no 1st Circle would be needed.

The 9th and final Circle of Hell was added by Dante for expressly for Traitors, whom he considered the lowest of the low... with Judas and Brutus being gnawed on by Satan himself trapped in the ice for all eternity (which is also not theologically accurate, the official position is that Satan isn't bound in Hell, but is free to walk the Earth until the end of days when he will then be cast into Hell).

Removing the 1st not-Hell layer and the 9th layer for traitors gets you... Seven Layers for the Seven Deadly Sins.

Quote from: jhkim on April 26, 2023, 02:32:18 PM
To me, deadly sins vampires seem like a hook maybe for a set of seven vampire individuals as monsters of the week or a team -- but they don't feel like they have enough meat on them to be a large world faction or PC option. My impression of this thread is that it's a replacement for White Wolf's vampire games -- so the vampire types should be interesting as PCs. Or is this more general about how to make vampires as interesting villains for games? I just had a vampire as the main villain of my last two D&D games, so I'd be curious about the latter.

I thought it was about making vampires interesting as PCs. But that doesn't mean they can't struggle with evil, or be evil from start. Feed's "Los Satanicos" setting is about playing evil b-movie vampires for whom their humanity is just a pragmatic cover for their villainous activities.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 26, 2023, 02:34:22 PM
You're aware that Dante's Inferno is a novel and not theological text right?

In your fantasy you can work whatever into it, but saying that it's in a novel doesn't prove the Christian theology wrong.

If I base my fantasy on Christian theology I don't have to change it to accommodate a novel or what some writer of a different fantasy did. Especially since he himself recognizes his shit is redundant.

I know, I was just using it as an example. Dante's nine circles of hell are structured oddly, since some circles are based on seven deadly sins while others are not. But Purgatory has seven terraces for the seven deadly sins. Whereas that ten circle structure I linked uses the seven deadly sins, plus three additional sins from less well-known theological studies.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 26, 2023, 02:45:29 PM
Care to explain exactly how not talking to the Uber driver means I'm breaking my and his chastity?

You forget that for each of the seven deadly sins there's an opposing virtue. The sin is indulging in the opposite of said virtue.

In the case of Lust it's about extramarital sex, the constant desire and indulgence in the pleasures of sex for the sole purpose of the pleasure without consideration for anyone/anything else.

Lust, Gluttony and Avarice (Greed) are all about the excess. God gave us sexual desire in order to be fruitful and multiply not to engage in empty sex with anyone we fancy. Eating and drinking are things we need to do to survive, so just doing that isn't a sin either, but doing it in excess, being wasteful is. Greed is about the accumulation of possessions/wealth for the sake of it, without ever being satisfied by any amount.

Yes, that's what the current understanding of those sins is. I was pointing out that trying to expand them runs into issues because they're essentially the same sin but aimed at different targets. Attempts to expand their meaning (or use archaic theological definitions) necessarily run into issues, as Chris succinctly summarized when he said the concepts he's describing need different names entirely to avoid confusion.

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 26, 2023, 02:51:18 PM
Also of note is that the 1st Circle is actually akin to the Greek Underworld... not a place of punishment, but a place to exist for all the souls of virtuous pagans who never knew God out of ignorance and conditions beyond their control. They didn't come to God through Christ so the theology of the time said they couldn't be in Heaven, but Dante didn't want them punished for something beyond their control so gave those figures the afterlife their cultures believed in. In more recent theological works its become more accepted that while we might be limited by the sacraments, God's mercy and power is not and so he could have saved the virtuous pagans at their death and thus they'd be Heaven and no 1st Circle would be needed.

The 9th and final Circle of Hell was added by Dante for expressly for Traitors, whom he considered the lowest of the low... with Judas and Brutus being gnawed on by Satan himself trapped in the ice for all eternity (which is also not theologically accurate, the official position is that Satan isn't bound in Hell, but is free to walk the Earth until the end of days when he will then be cast into Hell).

Removing the 1st not-Hell layer and the 9th layer for traitors gets you... Seven Layers for the Seven Deadly Sins.

Actually, that gives us Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath & Sloth (these are one layer in Inferno), Heresy, Violence, and Fraud.

Ultimately, like all theological and occult symbolism I find any structure of sins to be ultimately arbitrary regardless of what sins are picked. Lust, Gluttony and Greed are all manifestations of the same sin of Excess, just like Apathy, Despair and Doubt are all manifestations of Sloth, or Vanity and Arrogance and all sins really are ultimately manifestations of Pride. At the end of the day, a sin is bad because it places your own petty selfish desires above the wellbeing of others and yourself. I find any argument in favor of one structure over another to be ultimately arbitrary, because theology and occultism are not science.

Anyway, we're straying off topic here. Just go ahead and write your vampires based on the seven sins. It's your game. I'm distracting you and I apologize.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on April 26, 2023, 02:45:29 PM

Quote from: jhkim on April 26, 2023, 02:32:18 PM
To me, the explanation of lust just illustrates BoxCrayonTales' point about the deadly sins being vague in execution. Not talking to one's Uber driver as a person is objectification, for example. However, it's super unclear to call that the Sin of Lust. That's not language drift - it's always been a lack of clarity.

Care to explain exactly how not talking to the Uber driver means I'm breaking my and his chastity?

You forget that for each of the seven deadly sins there's an opposing virtue. The sin is indulging in the opposite of said virtue.

In the case of Lust it's about extramarital sex, the constant desire and indulgence in the pleasures of sex for the sole purpose of the pleasure without consideration for anyone/anything else.

Lust, Gluttony and Avarice (Greed) are all about the excess. God gave us sexual desire in order to be fruitful and multiply not to engage in empty sex with anyone we fancy.

GeekyBugle - your definition of lust directly contradicts Chris24601's definition. As I quoted earlier, he explained:

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 26, 2023, 01:08:09 PM
Lust isn't sexual desire. God gave us sexual desire to fulfill one of our purposes (be fruitful and multiply). Rather it is in objectifying others, focusing on using them to fulfill your desires, rather than focusing on fulfilling the other's needs. Again, lust is not just sexual, but any time we treat people as tools to achieve our ends.

(emphasis mine) If you think this definition is wrong, then please take it up with him. I was criticizing it.

That said, nearly all modern Christians have rejected that sex is solely for procreation. In general, it is not seen as a sin for spouses to have sex for pleasure.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 26, 2023, 04:22:56 PM

Ultimately, like all theological and occult symbolism I find any structure of sins to be ultimately arbitrary regardless of what sins are picked. Lust, Gluttony and Greed are all manifestations of the same sin of Excess, just like Apathy, Despair and Doubt are all manifestations of Sloth, or Vanity and Arrogance and all sins really are ultimately manifestations of Pride. At the end of the day, a sin is bad because it places your own petty selfish desires above the wellbeing of others and yourself. I find any argument in favor of one structure over another to be ultimately arbitrary, because theology and occultism are not science.

Anyway, we're straying off topic here. Just go ahead and write your vampires based on the seven sins. It's your game. I'm distracting you and I apologize.

We're not really straying out of topic since it's relevant to the design.

Now, as for "At the end of the day, a sin is bad because it places your own petty selfish desires above the wellbeing of others and yourself." This isn't so regarding the seven deadly sins, those are a sin because they harm your immortal soul not because you hurt others by indulging in them. Except in Islam, THEIR deadly sins are sins BECAUSE they hurt the Uma.

Also relevant if you plan on including Islam (or a similar religion) in your setting.

IMHO the Sin based vampires might work on a totally-not-VtM RPG but maybe not on other types of Urban Fantasy, but they fit just fine in a monster hunting RPG as variations on the classic Vlad Teppes vampire.

For the latter I would still include Vampires from other parts of the world, a Vampire that laughs at the Cross and Holy Water? Talk about your players being terrified the first time they face it. (which is also the motivation behind me trying to have different zombies)