Junk I bought recently

[InzeladunMaster]

The PCs, at least in Vampire which I am most familiar with, are supposed to be these morally conflicted, angsty monsters, trying to maintain some semblance of their humanity while living their monstrous lives.

I do not like those kinds of vampires. Too "Anne Rice" and/or "Angel" for me. No offence meant to those people who like that sort of vampire, but I found Louis (from Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire" and its innumerable sequals) and Angel (from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") to be sissies. Being morally conflicted and full of angst is not strong. It is sissy. I don't care how strong they were in a fight or how cute they looked on screen - to me, they were sissies. (Louis deserved to be Lestat's butt-monkey. That is how sissy he was. Of course, all of Anne Rice's vampires are homosexual, but that is another issue.)

Vampires should be like Dracula (from Bram Stoker's novel and countless movies), Barlow (from S. King's "'Salem's Lot"), Carmilla (a Lesbian vampiress from the novella "Carmilla," one of the inspirations for the literary Dracula) or Christabel (the Lesbian vampire from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, "Christabel). These monsters relished in their lusts and hungers. Even though he was occasionally pained by his hungers (usually because his vampirism interfered with his goals a lot), even Barnabas Collins (of Dark Shadows) was a great vampire who usually loved the chaos he caused.

I'd rather hunt the undead, ESPECIALLY if the other alternative is to play a sissy. I'd rather play a Dracula- or Barlow- or Carmilla-type strong vampire than a Louis- or Angel-type sissy vampire.

 

[InzeladunMaster]

though vampires and werewolves hate each other.

Why would vampires and werewolves hate each other? Several folkloric traditions insist that a werewolf who dies will rise again as a vampire as a punishment by an angry God for its evils in life.

Some traditions insist that the vampire is stronger during the full moon, that he can regenerate damage during the cycle of the full moon only. These vampires, of course, prefer to feed only during the full of the moon. This enhances the potential tie between vampires and werewolves.

I always thought the 1944 Columbia Pictures movie, "The Return of the Vampire" with Bela Lugosi, was interesting because the vampire was allied with a werewolf, which seemed a natural pairing.

In Haiti, the vampire is called the Loogaroo, which is a corruption of the French loup-garou, a word for werewolf.

 

[thormagni]

Kindred think humans are cattle. The pack believe that vampires are the abomination that made the humans create the technology. Which is what hurts the environment. The awakened just laughs at it all. No such thing as vamps or wolves. Just power.

Yeah, which is exactly the take that Hunter has on the whole World of Darkness. It is the human perspective. And no matter how they slice it, being a human in a world of Vampires would, um, suck! One day you realize that the whole human race, with all of its accomplishments, is just being used as puppets and cattle to these bloodsuckers, mind-controllers and possessing demons. Sure, Vampires have all these intricate motivations and machinations going on, but to the human Hunters, they are just a bunch of freakin' vampires, witches and ghosts. "Yeah, yeah. I understand. You have to convince the ruling prince that you didn't really plot against him when you set his henchman up for assassination by the Sabbat. Here, let me help. Eat shotgun."

And for Vince's comments on relative wimpiness, Vampire is very much an Anne Rice influenced game. The vampires are much more like that coterie of New Orleans vamps than any of the solitary bloodsuckers of other literary traditions. First they operate under the Masquerade, as OG mentioned. They don't want to be found out, because even for all their power they are extremely vulnerable. So there are severe family-enforced penalties for revealing your presence to the humans. And you have to maintain a shred of humanity, or you become a GM-run character. So you can't revel in the blood lust too much, else you are completely taken over. And many of the vampires have lived for hundreds or thousands of years, so they have become masters of plotting and conniving in their secret cells.

Y'see, all of the vampires are descended from one common ancestor in WoD -- Cain, the Biblical Cain, whose punishment for killing his brother was to be turned into a vampire and shunned by human society. Cain turned a small group of people into vampires like him, and they turned a small group of people into vampires and by the time it filters down to the player characters some 13 generations later, their vampire blood is pretty thin and weak. The only real way to gain more power is to consume a vampire higher than you on the family tree. And while that is strictly forbidden in most circumstances, if you can set the other vamp up somehow, you might get the OK to do it from the local ruling prince, or you might be able to do it without anyone knowing. Again, more incentive for scheming and manipulation.

And as for Rice's vampires all being gay, well I read that to mean that they were beyond human cares or concerns anymore. They are basically a new, asexual type of creature because traditional human procreation is out of the question anyway. (Vampires get no nookie!)

And the vampire/werewolf animosity in WoD? I dunno!

 

[InzeladunMaster]

And for Vince's comments on relative wimpiness, Vampire is very much an Anne Rice influenced game. The vampires are much more like that coterie of New Orleans vamps than any of the solitary bloodsuckers of other literary traditions. First they operate under the Masquerade, as OG mentioned.

That would make the game less fun for me. I much prefer the more traditional vampires of yore over the modern, homoerotic, angst-ridden versions of today. The best modern vision of a vampire that I have seen was "Shadow of the Vampire", which is a retelling of Nosferatu. That was an awesome movie because it brought back the old-style vampire - he was a true monster.

And as for Rice's vampires all being gay, well I read that to mean that they were beyond human cares or concerns anymore. They are basically a new, asexual type of creature because traditional human procreation is out of the question anyway. (Vampires get no nookie!)

Nah, she was just using them as an allegory for alternative lifestyles and how they must stay hidden or else suffer persecution. Which was fine for a book... but I got sick of it after three books. She just beat me over the head with the homosexuality until I just threw up my arms and exclaimed, "Look, I get it! Let it go!" and stopped reading the novels.

Even her non-vampire books are filled with nothing but gays. Nothing wrong with that, I just got tired of it. I thought The Mummy would be a decent book, but no. Even the mortals were all gay in that one.

"Interview with a Vampire" was a good novel. I will stand by that. The allegory worked for me. After that novel, I thought the theme just got preachy... and less subtle. I know she finds guy-guy sex erotic, but I could only take so much of it before I just stopped reading.

The best version of what you are talking about - the asexual vampire who has risen above traditional sexuality - can be found in Whitley Strieber's "The Hunger", which was made into an erotic movie with Susan Sarandan and David Bowie back in 1983. Ann Rice's homo-vampires cannot hold a candle to Strieber's truly bisexual monsters.

 

[Bob_Probst]

I think the modern concept of Vampirism has been to humanize them: What would happen to you or me if we suddenly became a vampire? How would we respond? I would hate loss of my life!

Even Stoker humanized his monster with his love of Mina. And with Stoker's Dracula, it's not the character himself that evokes such fascination but it's his dealing with the humans around him and the reactions evoked in them -- I think writers like Rice have simply turned that conflict inward.

Now, I agree with you about the superhero trend in modern vampirism but I don't think that's a central theme in much of the White Wolf games -- like any system, it's an option.

 

[thormagni]

Nah, she was just using them as an allegory for alternative lifestyles and how they must stay hidden or else suffer persecution. Which was fine for a book... but I got sick of it after three books. She just beat me over the head with the homosexuality until I just threw up my arms and exclaimed, "Look, I get it! Let it go!" and stopped reading the novels.

I didn't get any further than three books in Rice's books either. I thought Interview was good and the Vampire Lestat was interesting and I don't recall what the third was. Queen of the Damned maybe? It didn't make much of an impression on me.

And I did a little digging into the WoD vampire-werewolf animosity, 'cause I was curious. According to the Werewolf books, the werewolf are a force of nature, fighting against the corruption of the Wyrm, which doubles as human society's increasing efforts to squeeze out the wild places. Werewolves worship and revel in nature, life and wild places. Conversely, vampires are mockeries of life and the natural order. They are avatars of cities and the embodiment of the Wyrm's corruption of the natural order.

So there you go, that is the rationale.

 

[Bob_Probst]

I think inherently it was a mechanics decision -- the vampires needed an external foe to balance their power

 

[thormagni]

The best modern vision of a vampire that I have seen was "Shadow of the Vampire", which is a retelling of Nosferatu. That was an awesome movie because it brought back the old-style vampire - he was a true monster.

And just to clarify a little bit more on the Vampire setting. Pretty much every sort of vampire literary tradition is represented in Vampire. As OG was saying, there are different clans in the Vampire world and two large "famlies." The European style vampires are part of the Camarilla, which include several Vampire clans such as Nosferatu, Ventrue (the aristocrats), the crazy-ass Malkavians, the stylish, artistic Toreadors (Anne Rice), the Tremere (think Strahd from Ravenloft mixing vampirism with sorcery.) The vampires of the Camarilla generally try to maintain the Masquerade. The other major "family" is the Sabbat and they are much closer to "revel in our power" sort of vampirism Vince was talking about. Especially the Lasombra clan.

It has been my limited experience that the Vampire goth game stereotype comes from many (most?) players playing characters from the Camarilla family, especially the black trenchcoat, mopey types of vamps like the Toreadors. But you wouldn't HAVE to play this type of character. It is just very common.

 

[Odovacar's Ghost]

Perhaps I need to change what I said about the kindred hating the Garou (hrm, I think that is what the werewolves are called....anyway).

This is all based on my experience with the 7 cities larp(not sure if this exists anymore) which was held in Norfolk, VA. So, perhaps the kindred and the garou in this area hated each other. For what reason? I have no clue. So, I took this as a fact for WoD.

There are also different types of packs of Garou. Also different types of garou, as in corvid (were raven), werebear and others. Can't remember them all right now.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with it. I myself prefered the sabaat to the prissy camirila.

Though, not everyone playing WoD games are Goths. Of the 20 people who played in my apartment in Norfolk, perhaps 4 were goths, the rest were just freaks.

 

[Odovacar's Ghost]

A good read about the Sabbat.

http://www.patman.org/wod/sects/sabbat.asp

Excerpt:

Sabbat feel they are superior to humans. They feel no sympathy for humans; indeed, to live and act human, to feel human, is against their nature. Sabbat is the chosen. Mortals are not considered even of the same race as Sabbat. Mortals are considered animals and treated as pets and food. Sabbat occasionally use mortals as followers, servants, and spies. Mortal retainers are viewed as property and their owner may use them in any manner they see fit. Some of the most faithful mortals may become ghouls. Each ghoul is Blood Bound to only one Sabbat Vampire and does not participate in the Vaulderie. The sponsor or owner, is held accountable for all the ghoul's actions.