Introduction
I have a goal, a dream if you will, a vision of a future where a man can run a campaign with only vampires and never tire of them. Where players never grow bored staking their hearts, chasing them along dark alleys and never cease fearing their turning bite and hypnotic eyes. Well, be the change you want to see in the world. This is the introductory post for what will hopefully be a long series on vampires and stretching my creative limits to create 101 interesting and useful vampires, or vampire-adjacent monsters. But first we must discuss how vampires translate from folklore to RPGs.Vampires are endlessly fascinating. If you stretch your definition a bit, as you must with most anthropological concepts which defy categorization (nerds, especially ones with degrees love categorization), nearly every culture in the world has some version of vampires, demons that suck life, devils that drain blood or spirits which rise from the grave to feast on the living.
They are doubly fascinating when used in RPGs and I think this is due to their conceptual density and how they often force the rules to bend (or break) around them. When you discuss vampires, you're often discussing the myriad other tropes which surround them; aversion to sunlight, garlic and holy symbols, their inability so cross running water, their speed or strength or perhaps their allusions to nobility, classism and their predatory habits. You could also discuss less well-known tropes like their hypnotism, obsession with counting and control over or aversion to animals. Much less well-known, a virgin horse and boy would be used to identify a would-be vampire's grave by balking at it and refusing to cross, though in Serbia it was a black horse, associated with the underworld, which would stop at the grave. The density of these tropes slowly declines as you move outwards from popular culture and into the realm of the anthropological but remain evocative and useful.
Everyone expects at least some of these tropes in their game when dealing with vampires and this makes them fantastic monsters to use. Everyone knows trolls must be killed with fire and any subversions of this trope often feel cheap, but vampires have enough interesting components to subvert, invert or lampshade so as to be switched up on a setting by setting or even campaign by campaign basis. They lend themselves well to all levels and styles of play, especially in the OSR where you must employ creative measures to kill them efficiently. They fill out almost any part of the Dungeon Checklist , especially Arnold's #3, Something to Kill You, where they can be telegraphed easily (a mysteriously clean empty coffin) and avoided easily (cross a convenient stream or patch of sunlight) for low level adventurers. They reward planning ahead and choosing proper equipment, harkening all the way back to Classic 1974 D&D with a clove of garlic right alongside wolf's bane and a mallet and stakes.
As for bending the rules around them, a bestiary would be remiss to not include their weaknesses but they rarely fit into existing game mechanics. Both 5e and 3.5 "fudged" these weaknesses into their Monster Manual entries, with it being long-winded Trait in 5e and a special subsection in 3.5. Curiously, in 5e they may cross running water at the expense of 20 acid damage a turn, a ludicrous decision in my opinion. Like hammering a pair of pliers into a wrench. I think this is not an issue of vampires being outliers, but the whole structuring of monster stat block/lines to begin with.
I think this is indicative of issues with modern bestiaries. They are bloated with so much raw information its can be difficult to even determine what the monster is even supposed to do, at least tactically, let alone within the fiction (A whole blog has been dedicated to parsing the behavior's of 5e's monstrous compendiums). I doubt very much I need to know a vampire's "Skill Focus (selected Craft or Profession skill)" nor their "Perception +7" bonus in play but there you have it. Tactics and fiction should really be seamless and identical. The fact that I'm even making the distinction seems indicative of the problem.
Interestingly, 4e gets the closest to what I'm looking for, at least partially (its certainly the smallest block in new school D&D). Its vampire spawn have a trait called "Destroyed by Sunlight". If they can't get out of direct sunlight in one turn, they are turned to ash and destroyed. Mechanically light. Short, sweet and poetic.
Monsters need poetry. They require evocative language to inspire DMs to use them. I think one of the best monster manuals I've seen, if not the most efficient, Luke Gearing's Volume 2 Monsters &, a reinterpretation of the monster half of the 1974's Original D&D Monsters and Treasure booklet. While certainly not a tactical book, I think it gets closer to the heart, mystery and magic of monsters. Vampires especially need this.
Coding and Poetic Stat Lines
I read a blog post somewhere recently (and shame on me for not saving it on one of my rabbit holes) where monsters were described (in all caps!) by their WANTS, NEED and DESIRES and probably some other right-to-the-point words. I think it helps "code" monsters e.g. make them versatile by giving them parameters they act under or stimuli to respond to. It takes precious CPU usage off a DMs already fried brain.
<Tangent. You could additionally write more specific stuff. I had a green dragon who always ran away as soon as he lost 25% of his HP. I had a mad yeti, burned in the face from a prior encounter, who wouldn't fight near flame and would flee if he took more than 10 fire damage. At some point you move away from "code" to just preparing unique, specific reactions to events.>
This may seem paradoxical, poetic interpretations of monsters coupled with "code" to "program" monsters, but I think it works well in action. For example, here's one for one of my favorite monsters, the phase spider.
Phase Spider
HD 2/AC Leather/Damage 1d6+1
When spiders nest in wizards' towers, her strange brood will outgrow her and parasitize a wizards magic like a leech. It grows, eating its siblings like sharks in the womb until one remains. This is the phase spider.
It jumps between worlds, taking nightmares to lands Here, Imaginary and Ethereal.
It weaves webs that real dreamcatchers are made of and hunts you from dimensions you cannot see.
What will be left of you when your spirit is caught in its web, but your body moves on?
WANTS: To eat things that dream, to drain life from magicians
NEEDS: To eat, to survive
AVOIDS: Bright light, large flames (small ones it puts out with spittle)
DESIRES: To spin webs anchored between worlds
Perhaps WANTS and DESIRES is superfluous, but I feel like DESIRES implies a sort of advanced, premeditated motive. A wolf wants to eat you but a werewolf desires to taste the fear in your blood. You could string quite a few more of these along but I think more than 4 begins to increase the signal: noise ratio. For more powerful or unique monsters, you could give them unique codes perhaps the evil priest SUPPLICATES demons but then again you could put "supplicate demons" under DESIRES. Perhaps DREAMS (of) or PERISHES (if) could be used for specific flavor or to signal weaknesses. Let's see if we can conjure up a classic Dracula-type with this format.
Vampire (Classic)
HD 7/AC Maille/Damage 1d6+1
Take a man of nobility, in life who lusts for life, for the finer things, for flesh. Make sure he would do anything to get it. Make sure he can lie, as all good nobles can. Curse him and cut out his tongue so he cannot taste and drain him of all his blood. Bury him in the soil of his homeland. This is one of the paths a man may take to immortality.
DESIRES: To seduce you, to control you, to live in luxuryNEEDS: To feast on the blood of the livingAVOIDS: Sunlight, holy men, mirrors, others like itselfDESTROYED: By sunlight, stakes of local wood to its heart, decapitation and fire. Nothing else will work for long.
I am very much in favour of this All Vampires All the Time campaign idea.
ReplyDeleteI think I just found what I'll call the campaign! AVAT rolls of the tongue nicely.
Delete