I.... can't.... must... not... *gargle, choke*
I hate vampires. There, i said it. I hate vampires.
Not for the reasons many of you are bringing up though. Do vampires have to be evil? Like has been mentioned, if you're doing it DND-style, short answer is: yes.
But, as many alleged 'classics' of literature have shown in recent years, they don't -have- to be Culturally.
Fact is, though, good vampires make me angry. They're so.... mopey and morally troubled and "oh woe is me! I must fight these urges!" and -ugh-. I can't -stand- it.
Even the evil vampires are just all "Nyah nyah! I vant to suck your blood!"
maybe it's just my being inundated by stereotypical 1000 year old vampires named "Morpheus", or maybe it's because one can only handle so many "Angel" clones or clones of those Anne Rice folks.
that said, I also hate zombies, but I won't go there.
That's why I enjoyed 30 days of night so much. There were some vampires! Ruthless animalistic killing machines that didn't even want to create spawn, because in doing so they would threaten their already lacking food source, namely a small arctic community in Alaska. That's a vampire I could handle. More like ghouls than vampires, really. Wasn't even a clean double-pinprick bite, it was more like a "I'm going to tear out your throat and lap at the sweet, sticky juices within whilst reveling in the horrified screams of your nearby family"
-Thats- a vampire.
Anyways, I digress. I think the one thing we can learn from this is: No one is right, no one is wrong. But what we can say is this: The imagination is a great thing. Sure, this site was originally based loosely on DND, but it has since then deviated greatly. You can never completely divorce it from DND, no. But that's only because so much of the worlds created within were created for settings that were made for DND, and the bulk of fantasy conisseurs have at one time indulged in that most famous of Past-times that has been around since the 70s. Even if the site was not expressley based on the game, it would still have to deal with people who say "dragons can't do that" or "vampires are EEEVILLL!"
In order to discuss the morality of a vampire, one has to assume Absolute Morality. As a Christian, i obviously believe in Absolute Morality, and am of the camp that "vampires are expressley evil". But western culture has largely been growing to the theory of Relative Morality. To us, vampires are evil. Using logic, If Vampires are not always evil if Morality is Relative, and to Vampires their actions are necessary, if grim. Assuming absolute morality, torturing and killing a creature is an expressley evil act, and Vampires must torture and kill for it is their nature, and they are therefore evil.
Culturaly speaking, vampires started out representing evil. They represented the souls of damned individuals (often murderers or suicide victims {who were considered evil, yes}) who were buried in hallowed ground.
But in modern culture, Vampires have come to serve as a representation for a whole host of things. For our own unexplored lust, to the dark and mysterious, to the blood-thirsty and free side of human experience. To go around saying that "Vampires must be this way" or "Vampires must be that way" is like saying "People must be this way" or "people must be that way" or "this line of symbolic composition can only mean this, it will not change with the times, it will not mean something different to a different individual". Lots of people think that way, that doesn't mean they're -right-.
Role Playing is a form of literature. Crude and unpolished, but it is a form of literature. It is way for us to explore our own psyches, to explore the fantastical worlds we wish we could live in, and to act as a creative outlet for people who may not have another outlet. Its a way for us to be something that we could never be in real life, and if that means you want to play a Vampiric Paladin with a vendetta against his own kind and carries a jar of pigs-blood around to feast on when his urges over take him, go for it. But don't expect everyone to agree with it, and in fact expect a lot of opposition from people like me, the Old Guard of the Absolute Moralists.
... Okay, I'm done now.
