What system for Dracula as horror?

[Morrus]

Very cool! I'm curious what her take on it was, if you can share. I'm early in my reading, so I don't know how drastic a change to the rules a time change would require.

Luckily, we had microphones and recorded very sound we made, so you can listen for yourself when the podcast comes out tomorrow!

 

[hawkeyefan]

hah fair enough. I'll give it a listen for sure.

 

[Salthorae]

And didn't TSR do a Gothic period box as well

Masque of the Red Death - great addition to the setting and real fun play.

 

[Ghost2020]

Chill 1st or 2nd Ed, or GURPS would fit the bill.

I believe Dracula us already statted out for both systems.

 

[JeffB]

Masque of the Red Death - great addition to the setting and real fun play.

Thank you- Name totally escaped me!

 

[Herne's Son]

I've been on kind of a Unisystem/AFMBE kick lately, so I'd go with that.

Grab the stats for "Gothick Vampire" out of the "Atlas of the Walking Dead" supplement and start with that for the first villain. And then as the game progresses, add weird new vampires. Use the other zombie Aspects to make up all kinds of crazy undead.

How about vampires that drain bile, and spit acid? Or ones who drain the moisture from their victims, leaving them desiccated, mummy-like corpses? Go nuts!

 

[aramis erak]

The ones that come to mind immediately are

• BTVS/Angel/Army of Darkness (All unisystem lite, and fully intercompatible, along with Ghosts of Albion)
• Hunter: the Reckoning.

YZE has an OGL SRD, so that's a good option to adapt, especially if you're thinking of Alien's stress mechanic - it's in the SRD, too.

Alien would not be my first choice, despite loving it for Alien, simply because vampires aren't scare monsters so much as charm ones. Vaesen's mental damage mode seems better to me, thematically.

On theme, but I don't like the rules:
TriTac's Bureau 13.
Mayfair's Chill (I've not looked at Pacesetter's edition)

 

[evilgaz]

My go to for one-shot Horror is Dead of Night, so if you want to do it episodic (each session like an episode of the show with different characters as the hapless victims), that would be the way to go. I've found it works well at emulating TV or film based horror and is a relatively simple system, while rewarding tropes, so is great for giving breathing room for folk to ham it up.

Key features:
Survival Points - like luck, hit points, plot resources, rerolls and all sorts bundled together - while you still have some, you've got a level of plot immunity, once out your doom is imminent...
Bad Habits - playing into horror tropes gets you SP back "I'll just go check on what that screaming was on deck by myself"
Tension - as things get worse tension die (get a bit d20) racks up - the world gets more dark and horrifying as it clocks up. The ref can use tension points to mess with player's rolls.
Baddies can be esoteric and tough - they've got their own rules, so the unknown quality of Dracula (or whoever's) powers can be fearsome.

Potential downside:
It is meant to be horror-fuelled and so campaign play is not really font and centre. If your players want the same character for many weeks, this isn't really the game for that.


I've not tried it myself yet, but I've heard good things about A Town Called Malice (Monkeyfun Studios) might fit as a kind of Nordic Noir spin on things with an "unknown" baddie - although again, it strikes me as one shot material.