I'm looking to homebrew a VTM/WoD-esque campaign for Savage Worlds. Any source/campaign books and supplements that I should look at to get inspired on crafting NPCs and equipment? I already have created the basic setting rules and factions, just need some inspiration to diversify character and equipment stats, and to incorporate magic in a way that suits such a setting.

You could use many of the powers normally attributed to Arcane Backgrounds and just alter the Power Points to not be recovered without feeding. IOW, the power points represent the "blood pool" of VtM. Note that this means many Edges that play with power point recovery (including the one that gives you some on an initiative Joker) would need to be altered or eliminated.

OTOH, Savage Rifts has vampires, but they are not like the WoD/VtM vampires other than sucking blood.

Good idea to tie PP to blood pool, thanks!

I have not looked at it myself, but the Rippers setting might have something on vampires as antagonists that could be adapted.

Rel's Den
https://web.archive.org/web/20190807212724/https://relsden.com/
had Darker Days, Darker Nights:

The Elevator Pitch:
This world is a contemporary version of the "Rippers" setting and borrows themes from the "World of
Darkness" role-playing games as well as popular culture icons such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade and
the stories of writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and Jim Butcher.

Character Creation:
All characters begin play with two new statistics: Corruption and Sanity. Both of these stats start at zero.
See the "Gameplay" section for more details on these attributes

Thanks, I'll have a look at Rippers and Darker Days, Darker Nights

Rifts Vampires come in the variety of flavors that exist in the Palladium Rifts books - which vary massively in power. By WoD comparisons starting vampires in Rifts are *massively* more powerful. But it would be useful to look at to give you some ideas.

Rippers has rules for vampires that are good for Neonate/Ancillae type vampires.

But let me throw in a couple of thoughts. Rather than approach it from a template, consider the elements you want to scale up/down with and how they'll operate.

Bloodpool = Powerpool
It's an obvious choice. But you're going to want to determine how this pool ever increases/decreases in game. Normally these values in WoD are static outside of Diablerie. This means if you're going to have Diablerie you're going to want to define what you get from Diablerie and make it explicit. An obvious one would be the acquisition of the PowerPoints Edge, among anything else you deem appropriate.

Defining Vampire Powers
Should be pretty obvious - Boost (which covers a LOT of ground with it's versatility). Healing (Self only),  But if your'e going for a generic vampire, you're missing out on possibilities with Clan specific abilities which would require some consideration and work. Other abilities I think are appropriate - Darksight, Mind Reading, Illusion, Beast Friend, Confusion, Empathy, Fly, Invisibility, Relief, Sound/Silence, Speak Language, Slumber. Of course the Powers list covers literally anything/everything you'd find in WoD. The issue of course is you defining what the baseline is, which I think could take some extra love by modding that baseline by bloodline specific powers.

Don't forget about special Monster Abilities: Fear, Immunity, etc. OR if you're feeling cheeky, some of their abilities might not require Bloodpoints at all, and you can use the Pointless Power-System (it's just a check with a penalty equal to the overall modified cost of the Power). Natural Weapons. Undead condition among others.

Super Stats
Of course in WoD you can only raise your physical stats to whatever your Generational Max's are. You'll have to be thoughtful on what those caps will be for your SW conversion. Beyond d12 has very superhuman potential concerns. Like beyond d12+3 you're effectively doing Heavy Damage. Worth considering if you want your Vampires at that level to be doing some really crazy shit (but of course you do! that's the fun, right?)

Weaknesses
Easily handled - in game rules pretty much have you covered: Dependency (blood, duh), Environmental Weakness - Holy objects/ground? as well as the effects of Sunlight (you can crib these from Rippers/Rifts depending on how nasty you wanna make it)

Everything else you'll have to eyeball -

Stake through the Heart - Called Shot, needs at least 1 Wound to cause Paralysis.
Starvation mechanics could easily be handled by Fatigue.

Anyhow just some food for through for you.

I would recommend taking a look at the Deadlands Harrowed and the various edges they can take.  Some may be good stand ins for Discipline powers. 

In Anne Rice (and all non-RPG vampire fiction that addresses the subject) the vampires don't have generational limits and just get more powerful with age (if that: a lot of vampire fiction has teenagers taking out centuries old vamps). If the vampire's creator is particularly powerful then that might translate to increased power for their created vampire, but this isn't a consistent rule.

Also, I would ditch pretentious jargon if at all possible. Just call it what it is: baby vamps, journeymen vamps, vampire cannibalism (which I don't recommend including because it steals attention from eating humans), vampire powers, blah blah.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 18, 2022, 10:01:48 AM
In Anne Rice (and all non-RPG vampire fiction that addresses the subject) the vampires don't have generational limits and just get more powerful with age (if that: a lot of vampire fiction has teenagers taking out centuries old vamps). If the vampire's creator is particularly powerful then that might translate to increased power for their created vampire, but this isn't a consistent rule.

Also, I would ditch pretentious jargon if at all possible. Just call it what it is: baby vamps, journeymen vamps, vampire cannibalism (which I don't recommend including because it steals attention from eating humans), vampire powers, blah blah.

Yep - you could map that into Savage Worlds Ranking system. Novice, Seasoned, Veteran, Heroic, Legendary. Assign specific trait modifiers/hindrances to each Rank. You'd have to codify how one makes those progressions of course...

Quote from: tenbones on July 18, 2022, 10:21:44 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 18, 2022, 10:01:48 AM
In Anne Rice (and all non-RPG vampire fiction that addresses the subject) the vampires don't have generational limits and just get more powerful with age (if that: a lot of vampire fiction has teenagers taking out centuries old vamps). If the vampire's creator is particularly powerful then that might translate to increased power for their created vampire, but this isn't a consistent rule.

Also, I would ditch pretentious jargon if at all possible. Just call it what it is: baby vamps, journeymen vamps, vampire cannibalism (which I don't recommend including because it steals attention from eating humans), vampire powers, blah blah.

Yep - you could map that into Savage Worlds Ranking system. Novice, Seasoned, Veteran, Heroic, Legendary. Assign specific trait modifiers/hindrances to each Rank. You'd have to codify how one makes those progressions of course...

Thank you for the explanation. I don't even remember the last time I even looked at the Savage World rules, if I ever did.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on July 18, 2022, 10:50:42 AM
Thank you for the explanation. I don't even remember the last time I even looked at the Savage World rules, if I ever did.

You should give it a whirl. I was very skeptical of it (which is pretty much my default), but it really is great ruleset out of the box. But where it shines is if you like tinkering - it's made for it. And it's literally almost impossible to break as long as you're not overtly trying to break it.

Quote from: tenbones on July 17, 2022, 03:56:35 PM
Rifts Vampires come in the variety of flavors that exist in the Palladium Rifts books - which vary massively in power. By WoD comparisons starting vampires in Rifts are *massively* more powerful. But it would be useful to look at to give you some ideas.

Rippers has rules for vampires that are good for Neonate/Ancillae type vampires.

But let me throw in a couple of thoughts. Rather than approach it from a template, consider the elements you want to scale up/down with and how they'll operate.

Bloodpool = Powerpool
It's an obvious choice. But you're going to want to determine how this pool ever increases/decreases in game. Normally these values in WoD are static outside of Diablerie. This means if you're going to have Diablerie you're going to want to define what you get from Diablerie and make it explicit. An obvious one would be the acquisition of the PowerPoints Edge, among anything else you deem appropriate.

Defining Vampire Powers
Should be pretty obvious - Boost (which covers a LOT of ground with it's versatility). Healing (Self only),  But if your'e going for a generic vampire, you're missing out on possibilities with Clan specific abilities which would require some consideration and work. Other abilities I think are appropriate - Darksight, Mind Reading, Illusion, Beast Friend, Confusion, Empathy, Fly, Invisibility, Relief, Sound/Silence, Speak Language, Slumber. Of course the Powers list covers literally anything/everything you'd find in WoD. The issue of course is you defining what the baseline is, which I think could take some extra love by modding that baseline by bloodline specific powers.

Don't forget about special Monster Abilities: Fear, Immunity, etc. OR if you're feeling cheeky, some of their abilities might not require Bloodpoints at all, and you can use the Pointless Power-System (it's just a check with a penalty equal to the overall modified cost of the Power). Natural Weapons. Undead condition among others.

Super Stats
Of course in WoD you can only raise your physical stats to whatever your Generational Max's are. You'll have to be thoughtful on what those caps will be for your SW conversion. Beyond d12 has very superhuman potential concerns. Like beyond d12+3 you're effectively doing Heavy Damage. Worth considering if you want your Vampires at that level to be doing some really crazy shit (but of course you do! that's the fun, right?)

Weaknesses
Easily handled - in game rules pretty much have you covered: Dependency (blood, duh), Environmental Weakness - Holy objects/ground? as well as the effects of Sunlight (you can crib these from Rippers/Rifts depending on how nasty you wanna make it)

Everything else you'll have to eyeball -

Stake through the Heart - Called Shot, needs at least 1 Wound to cause Paralysis.
Starvation mechanics could easily be handled by Fatigue.

Anyhow just some food for through for you.

Thanks tenbones! I was looking forward to hearing from you since you've had extensive experience with SW. I'm still thinking about how to hack the powers list so that vampire lineage plays a part in determining what powers characters can take on. I might also try to create some lineage-specific Edges after I've finished looking through the other suggested books.

Following for input I've toyed with this idea before. So far conclusions I've come to are either using supers and building frameworks for bloodlines and powers.

Otherwise harrowed is a good framework to build off of, I go back and forth about using blood points. Especially if someone wants to play a vampire mage or sorcerer like tremere or kundalini magic. If possible I'd avoid having two separate resource pools. I do like tenbones idea looks similar to what I ended up coming up with though never actually hit the table with It. Also worth noting super attributes are a harrowed edge.

I think you can ditch blood points. Just let vampires recover PP by drinking blood. Or whatever psychic vampires do.

On the other hand, you might not want vampires to behave like blood-powered car engines. If regular sorcerers don't regain PP by eating, then why should vampires? Just a thought.