Setting Design: Dracula

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 11:59 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: You'll also want to throw in a bunch of works of Poe. Like, really pretty much any of them.

Seconded. Also, they tend to have Poe's stuff in single-volume.

And if you ever want to subvert it, try Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:41 am

I'd also recomend Fuast and The Devil and Tom Walker or The Devil and Daniel Webster if you want someone calling up the devil or some demon and making a deal.

As for the actual mechanics, an idea hit me. A "Lore" dicepool or skill which is used in checks to protect yourself, other people and locations from the bad guys. This can manifest itself by saying prayers, hanging garlic everywhere, doing voodoo magic to drive out evil spirits or by waving a cross around. Why a thing works or why a thing doesn't work becomes flavour and keeping things thematic is left up to the DM saying, "No that's stupid and doesn't fit with the setting, pick something else."

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:52 am

Elennsar wrote:Tzor: There's one problem with that. There are vampires here (presumably) that don't give a shit about crosses any more than I do.

Or any other religious symbols. So unless somehow being a cross or whatever has power regardless of what the individual vampire thinks (or all vampires are infected with the same deeply buried fears/hates, which may or may not be a good thing), that wouldn't work.

Shame, because that neatly handles any symbol the vampire -thinks- is scary works, and different vampires would have different ideas.

Just not the fact that there's no reason for most vampires to share Dracula's problem with crosses (Orthodox -or- Catholic) if its just his mental issues.

Well, that all depends. Remember the basic argument of phobias is that they are by their nature irrational. Whether you believe in crosses or not is moot if you have an irrational fear of them. Now you could expand this one step further, vampires get their irrational phobias from their sires. (Literally it flows throug the blood.) So it doesn't matter that Joe who was sired by someone sired by Vlad, doesn't believe in crosses; they freak him out and since he doesn't know why he wraps some legend around it to explain it. It's not a flaw in him (ego showing) but a power in that cross, although why he can't say.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 1:57 am

Well, that all depends. Remember the basic argument of phobias is that they are by their nature irrational. Whether you believe in crosses or not is moot if you have an irrational fear of them. Now you could expand this one step further, vampires get their irrational phobias from their sires. (Literally it flows throug the blood.) So it doesn't matter that Joe who was sired by someone sired by Vlad, doesn't believe in crosses; they freak him out and since he doesn't know why he wraps some legend around it to explain it. It's not a flaw in him (ego showing) but a power in that cross, although why he can't say.

Right, but if the idea is that Dracula is ashamed of himself on some level and believes he's damned, a vampire who doesn't feel that won't care if I wave a cross at him.

So short of the "irrational phobias from their sire" or a part of being a vampire (for every vampire out there), a vampire who regarded crosses as a silly symbol of a stupid cult would have no reason to feel as Dracula does.

So in a way, if all vampires are paranoid of crosses, even if there is no actual power IN the cross per se, crosses DO have power over vampires.

I'm just musing aloud here on that part.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 5:34 am

I might have missed this, but...

1. Why do symbols of faith repel vampires? Is it because vampires are an anathema to the faithful, or does faith somehow push them back? Or is it the will of the individual that presses them back?

2. If the reason is based on faith, is it faith in a higher power, or is it faith that the symbol will repel the vampire?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 7:34 am

Psychic Robot wrote:I might have missed this, but...

1. Why do symbols of faith repel vampires? Is it because vampires are an anathema to the faithful, or does faith somehow push them back? Or is it the will of the individual that presses them back?

The way I was pushing for it's the will of the individual that pushes the vampire back and the symbol's a focus. Frank's way it's not even faith, the symbol just happens to be magical bane to vampires, no faith or will required, just geometry.

2. If the reason is based on faith, is it faith in a higher power, or is it faith that the symbol will repel the vampire?

my way? yes.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 8:56 am

Grek wrote: As for the actual mechanics, an idea hit me. A "Lore" dicepool or skill which is used in checks to protect yourself, other people and locations from the bad guys. This can manifest itself by saying prayers, hanging garlic everywhere, doing voodoo magic to drive out evil spirits or by waving a cross around. Why a thing works or why a thing doesn't work becomes flavour and keeping things thematic is left up to the DM saying, "No that's stupid and doesn't fit with the setting, pick something else."

This is exactly the same as the "Piety" mechanic, and it's still completely out of genre. The entire point of this genre is that somebody with prior vampire experience can be told over the phone about the fact that you've been vampire attacked twice, and he can tell you to run around wearing garlic flower necklaces to keep a third attack from happening over the phone, and then you can do that and have it work.

In short, you don't need to "be" someone awesome to use knowledge of vampiric weaknesses, you don't even need to know all the weaknesses. You just need to know a weakness and respond accordingly. You can be told what the weakness is in the middle of a battle, or look it up in book, or get an info dump during an adventure, or even just guess and check until you die or find something that works. This knowledge functions not like a personal power rating but like actual knowledge, because it's actual knowledge!

You don't wait for the level up music before you can act on being told about the garlic thing or shown a mystic protective ward, you can just do it immediately, because these are discrete facts that someone can tell you in a 3 second "did you know" segment. The D&D model, where you are expected to never fight the same monster twice and the party sage gives the exposition of what the hell you're up against each time - is totally not in force. There are only about 1-20 monster types in the entire world, and the expectation is that if you make a campaign of it you'll end up fighting the same monster type over and over again. And you get to respond like they do in Monster Squad or Lost Boys - by taking limited information and making weapons out of that.

It's about using personal ingenuity to take advantage of consistent and knowable physics to achieve a MacGuyveresque victory. Not about you using your inherent awesomeness to power through all problems with your huge die rolls.

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 2:56 pm

This is not at all a slight on the genre, but when does it stop being MacGuyveresque? One would think that after the fifth session (or even the first), wearing the garlic and tattooing a sunwheel on your neck stops being 'creative'. If anything, the party starts having to fight against ingenuity through a campaign as the vampires look for ways around their limits.

violence in the media · Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:33 pm

virgileso wrote:This is not at all a slight on the genre, but when does it stop being MacGuyveresque? One would think that after the fifth session (or even the first), wearing the garlic and tattooing a sunwheel on your neck stops being 'creative'. If anything, the party starts having to fight against ingenuity through a campaign as the vampires look for ways around their limits.

How aware are vampires of their limits and weaknesses? Would there be a way to do this sort of escalating arms race, or should you eventually get to the point where you have your crosses and your garlic and your blessed bowie knife and it's a question of whether or not you can beat the vampire in hand to hand?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jan 20, 2009 3:55 pm

virgileso wrote:This is not at all a slight on the genre, but when does it stop being MacGuyveresque? One would think that after the fifth session (or even the first), wearing the garlic and tattooing a sunwheel on your neck stops being 'creative'. If anything, the party starts having to fight against ingenuity through a campaign as the vampires look for ways around their limits.

Absolutely.

Part of the point of Dracula is that it is a cat and mouse game. Remember that Dracula spends the last third of the book running while the vampire hunters track him down and take down his protections and companions one by one.

Basically you're starting out life doing Lost Boys, where you fight vampires who seriously have the upper hand and you don't even win except that the vampires piss away some of their advantages because they have arbitrary goals and aren't considering you a threat. Then you're doing Monster Squad - where you actually have a pretty good plan and some tight organization and start taking out vampires in street fights. Then you're doing Blade, where you break into their offices, blast through their minions, and kill their leaders on their home turf.

And yeah, it's really hard to go someplace from that. Consider how much Blade 2 sucked. Or the limitations of the Mummy Sequels. You can only go so far rolling out harder core ancient powerful vampires - and as it happens as far as it will take you is Underworld 2. Which is fine. I mean seriously, how many layers of "super vampire" did Buffy chew through by the end of Season 7? It was not a small number.

Basically you can keep things fresh by several means:

Supernatural variability. This gets insulting fast if it's not handled with care. My suggestion here would be to throw down a very manageable number of supernatural types and resist the D&D temptation of throwing crazy "fake vampires" and shit.
Mortal servitors. This can be genre breaking if over used. After all, while it's definitely in-character to have a vampire lord sick a bunch of wolves and dudes with axes on you, the fact is that you came to this game to fight vampires, not normal humans. Nevertheless, having a good number of non-supernatural opponents can really keep vampire opponents scarce enough that it will take them a long time to go stale.
Mystery. Vampires are mostly using their powers to molest homeless children and buy up land on the East Side. Mostly they don't, for example, run out to have sword fights with vampire hunters. Because they don't always win those.

So basically we're looking at a situation where you can probably go through like 9 Vampire story arcs before it goes stale. More if you decide to make things all political such that the answer to every vampire isn't ultimately "catch up with it and chop it to pieces with steel." You can throw in like 6-8 non-vampire supernaturals to go up against, and make each story arc go for like 5-8 sessions and keep things going in an interesting fashion with the same characters for over two years of weekly gaming.

That should be plenty.

-Username17