Reclaim the Vampire!
Vampire, the blood-sucking predators of ancient myth appear in some form or another in almost every culture. Creatures that shun daylight and stalk humans as prey. Unstoppable,
inhuman and utterly terrifying, vampires rightfully earned their place in millions of nightmares.
Role-playing games, almost from the beginning, included these fiends in the list of things that need killing. Many an adventure began with PCs desperately seeking out a murderous vampire’s lair and hoping to get there before sundown. Because as the sun set for another night, the vampire rose with his full complement of powers and an insatiable hunger. Pure predators with no soul, no conscience and endless time to sow evil. They were, in a word, bad-ass!
Today, modern pop culture offers a new niche for the venerable vampire to fill.
Boyfriend.
Yes, the horrific undead lords of old now feast only on animals and seem to enjoy platonic relationships with teenage girls. Even excluding the execrable “Twilight” series, my bookstore overflows with vampire-as-romantic-hero themed novels.
Mighty villains reduced to simpering, effete, self-loathing metrosexuals is simply wrong. Really, do you think any vampire woke up one morning and said,” I am so miserable, the supernatural beauty, immortality, super-powers and an endless food supply grow so tiresome. I think I shall go back to high school.”
Somehow I doubt that.
Well, no more I say! It ends here!
Since I cannot end Stephanie Meyer’s reign of pop-culture terror regarding vampires, I ask that each and every game master that reads this post run a vampire encounter in the near future and prove once again that blood-sucking undead deserve some respect. Do not just beat up the PCs either, have your vampire snack on a convent full of nuns, wipe out a pre-school, murder pacifists and then finish up by eating the party’s favorite NPC and hanging the corpse up in the local temple. Seriously, really kick the puppy on this one. It is almost impossible to go over the top.
Will it make any difference in the greater culture at large? Probably not. But for that one session, a group of people once again face a vampire as they should be, fearless, unrepentant and hungry.
Trask, The Last Tyromancer
The Vampire’s a lost cause (especially since in loads of game stats nowadays they’re total candy asses.) What we need to do is preempt them. I warn you, aliens and robots are next! They already got Werewolves too!
It wasn’t more than a few weeks ago, in a 3.5 campaign, I had one of my vampire BBEG’s spawn minions drain a PC to 4 Con before the party could pry it off.
I kinda know what Wyatt means though, I had to start giving my vampires bonus hp equal to Cha mod*HD just to keep them standing for a couple rounds.
And as for the aliens and robots: Hush, before you give them any ideas!
Thank you for inspiring me to include a seriously evil vampire in my next campaign. Not just for 1 session though, I am going to ramp up the fear, hate and loathing for several levels before he can be confronted.
Yes sir, with pleasure!
I can see this happening Friday, and then to the other group Saturday ^.^
“I warn you, aliens and robots are next! They already got Werewolves too!”
You’re right! Stephanie Meyer’s book The Host is about aliens.
It all started with Anne Rice. She didn’t candy coat it too badly, and her characters were actually intriguing, but it was a slippery slope from there.
In a PBEM game I’ve got a PC in we’ve got a vampire problem and its no namby-pamby twilight job but a real vicious Salem’s Lot type thing. It wiped half the party in a fight and left the rest sorely wounded and still got away. We’re still working out how to kill the thing or even whether to leave the locals to their fate.
YES. One thing to add: 30 Days Darkness.
Any other “Thing” calling itself a Vampire and feeding on animals while attending High School should be staked and left out for the Sun…unless they Sparkle — then they should just be put out of My Misery.
Vampires are not cute and cuddly. Neither are Werewolves, Ghosts, Liches, Zombies, Faeries (Read some olde stories…), or any of the other Supernatural Beings….but especially Vampires!!!
Nadrakas
You want inspiration for making even weak statted vampires into awesome fearsome predators pick up copy of White Wolfs old Sabbat book. My personal favorite tactic, a vamp gets aboard a plane/ship and turns or kills everybody on board before crashing it into the target city/encampment, whatever and using the chaos to attack it’s actual target.