Junk I bought recently

[InzeladunMaster]

The European style vampires are part of the Camarilla

I take it the "Camarilla" are based off of Le Fanu's "Carmilla"? She was always respelling her name throughout her history (Milarca and the like). Of course, Carmilla herself is a Karnstein in that story.

I can't imagine Nosferatu or Dracula as part of a "clan" of vampires.

 

[thormagni]

I take it the "Camarilla" are based off of Le Fanu's "Carmilla"? She was always respelling her name throughout her history (Milarca and the like). Of course, Carmilla herself is a Karnstein in that story.

I can't imagine Nosferatu or Dracula as part of a "clan" of vampires.

No idea about the Camarilla origin, or the character you are referring to. I'm drawing a blank here.

The vampire hanger-ons that, say, Dracula had? That would be the clan. At its base level a clan is simply the vampire and its followers. Under World of Darkness mythology, each of the clans are descended from a particular progenitor with most descending from like the second or third generation after Caine. So say a person was converted by a vampire in the line of the original Ventrue partriarch or matriarch. If the vampire who converts you was a 12th generation Ventrue, you would be a 13th generation Ventrue. As I recall, the vampire blood is too weak after the 13th generation to make new vampires, but I may be misremembering...

Generally members of clans follow the same basic style, appearance, weaknesses, abilities and outlooks of those above them. For example, all Lasombra cannot be seen in a mirror, all Nosferatu are horrendously ugly. The style, appearance and such are probably self-selection, i.e. the beautiful Toreadors probably are more likely to convert someone who is beautiful, while Malkavians are embracing lunatics. The weaknesses and abilities probably have more to do with the blood of the particular line.

 

[thormagni]

Some of the clans are extremely large and extremely long-lasting, i.e. they can trace their lineage back all the way to Caine or close to him. Others are fairly recent. For example the Venice-based Giovanni clan only became a clan in their own right about 500 years ago. Everyone in that clan is in the lineage of the original Giovanni vampire, who was a member of another clan until he/she branched off on their own.

 

[InzeladunMaster]

But Dracula is a self-generated vampire according to the novel. No one "converted" Dracula or made him a vampire. So suicides, werewolves, blasphemers or the horribly evil in life do not become vampires like they do in folklore?

One of the things I liked about "Shadow of the Vampire", which dealt with Nosferatu, is that he did not remember how he became a vampire and he does not know how to make others into vampires. He is horribly alone.

Carmilla is a Lesbian vampire from a J. Sheriden Le Fanu short story that predates "Dracula." It has been filmed many times (although never faithfully). Some renditions include Vadim's "Blood and Roses" and Hammer's "Karnstein Trilogy", which includes "Lust for a Vampire," "The Vampire Lovers," and "Twins of Evil." (I have all but the last film)

Anne Rice did the whole "every vampire comes from a single source" thing in "Queen of the Damned." I didn't like that. Does the setting allow for self-generated vampires?

Vampire blood being weak? I don't understand that. They replenish their blood constantly. Are they doing the whole "vampirism is a virus" crap? Something physical contained in the blood instead of a metaphorical element? What about self-generated vampires?

 

[thormagni]

Does the setting allow for self-generated vampires?

Vampire blood being weak? I don't understand that. They replenish their blood constantly. Are they doing the whole "vampirism is a virus" crap? Something physical contained in the blood instead of a metaphorical element? What about self-generated vampires?

Again, I'm not an expert on Vampire and I'm not really fond of the entire idea of the game, so take this with a grain of salt. In the World of Darkness, Caine was cursed for slaying Abel. God turned him into a vampire.

He created or "embraced" several other vampires, they embraced other people and so on, down through the years. Every generation that a vampire is removed from Caine, the weaker they are. Generation and blood potency, if you will, is a general measure of how powerful a vampire is. There have been 13 "generations" of vampires since Caine, each weaker than the one before. A 14th generation vampire would be barely distinguishable from a human being in power. The further removed a vamp is from the original vampire, the weaker their blood is, i.e. the weaker their power is, the weaker their vampiric abilities are and the less able they are to pass on their vampirism by embracing vampires under them.

There are vampires that are thousands of years old in the WoD. They generally seclude themselves from all modern interactions and have lost all semblance of their humanity. A third generation vampire would be insanely powerful and wily by modern vampire standards. I think all the second generation vampires are dead and Caine is missing, but don't quote me on that.

No, there is no virus that I am aware of. It is a curse from God on Caine and his blood.

Can vampires self-generate in WoD? Not that I am aware of.

 

[Odovacar's Ghost]

Self created vampires? I think that may be possible. I believe that is how the Tremere came about.

http://www.patman.org/wod/clans/tremere/tremerehistory1.asp

Though Clan Tremere doesn't date back millenia like many clans do, that doesn't make its history any less colorful. The Tremere are by far the most powerful and influential non-original clan in existence. They are also unique in that they are not, in the strictest sense, descendants of Caine; as befits a group whose main focus has always been magic, they owe their origins to sorcery.

It may not be common knowlege that the Tremere were a powerful group even before they became vampires. In fact, the use of Thaumaturgy (the ability to use magic which sets this clan apart) is not vampiric as most other disciplines are. House Tremere (a group of around 75 members) was part of an organization called The Order of Hermes, a mage group which existed through most of the Dark Ages.

Many of the current Council of Seven followed Tremere as the House came to be among the most respected in the Order. Tremere, after outliving the founders of his House, began to search for immortality. He knew his magic could prolong life, but not to the extent he wished.

It was not Tremere who found the secret to immortality, however. That distinction went to an enterprising young apprentice named Goratrix . The apprentices discoveries did not come easily. He had conducted many vile experiments on babies, virgins, and the like with little or no results. Finally Goratrix was able to study a group which already had immortality - the Undead. These experiments were a resounding success; Goratrix, along with Tremere, called a House Assemblage.

It was at this meeting in 1022 A.D. when a group of seven Mages finally attained immortality through drinking a concoction made of altered vampire blood. Tremere saw the potential immediately, and theorized about the possibilities of becoming an actual vampiric clan - on par with the antediluvian clans. Both he and Goratrix concluded that in order to achieve that kind of power, one must consume and assimilate the life force of one of the ancient vampires. Tremere did just that.

Today, though Tremere is unlive and well, the clan is generally run by members of the Council. The Council follows the Code set up by Tremere; and dissension between members is nearly unheard of. Apparently, lust for power can be heriditary- as this is still a driving goal for most Tremere. It is this lust coupled with clan unity that make the Tremere so dangerous.

 

[thormagni]

Self created vampires? I think that may be possible. I believe that is how the Tremere came about.

http://www.patman.org/wod/clans/tremere/tremerehistory1.asp

Well, even in that example, they consumed vampire blood. So that blood came from somewhere, I would think. So it is an unconventional embrace, but it is not like they were individually cursed or buried in the wrong ground or something, if you see what I mean.

And for anyone wondering how the "embrace" works in Vampire, a vamp essentially drains a victim to death, and then just at the moment of death, feeds back some of the vampire's own blood to the victim. The victim then rises as a vampire itself.

 

[InzeladunMaster]

In the World of Darkness, Caine was cursed for slaying Abel. God turned him into a vampire.

Oh. So it is a Christian game.

The further removed a vamp is from the original vampire, the weaker their blood is, i.e. the weaker their power is, the weaker their vampiric abilities are and the less able they are to pass on their vampirism by embracing vampires under them.

Traditional vampires can kill their progenitor, which brings them to full strength. Is this true in this game? Generally, vampire "brides" cannot create new vampires - only the full strength master vampire.

Can vampires self-generate in WoD? Not that I am aware of.

That is a weakness of the game in my eyes, since it does not allow for anything new and surprising. However, I can see why this is, now that I understand it to be a Christian game. God worked obvious miracles and curses in Biblical times, but does not do so in modern times, a turn of events that I had a hard time reconciling as a child going to church, but which most Christians seem to accept as a matter of course. Of course, God would not curse anyone else these days, since these days are not Biblical times.

I think a better vampire game can be created, one which would allow for spontaneous, new vampires, such as exist in literature. Also one which leaves out the obvious Christian mindset and minimizes the Anne Rice type of vampire sissy.

 

[thormagni]

OK. Now I have to write a patented, "John post" that will ramble on way too long and get way too wordy. Stand back.

Oh. So it is a Christian game.

Well, I think it would be more accurate to say they take advantage of some Christian themes, than to say that it is a Christian game. I can't imagine a denomination or sect of Christianity that would look at the game's complete hedonism and sympathetic portrayal of these monsters and see any sort of Christian teaching. Maybe calling it anti-Christian would be a better way to describe it, since you are essentially taking the role of the Christian bad guys (especially in the Demon sequel game.) In Vampire you are a descendant of one of Judeo-Christianity's first villains. In other World of Darkness games, you are playing the monsters, witches and fallen angels, literally.

In the "Time of Judgment" storyline from two years ago, the World of Darkness literally ended. They released a Time of Judgment book for each World of Darkness series, tied up all the loose ends and wrapped everything up. Each book in the Time of Judgment series offered several "official" options for ending the campaign and in the few books I have read each offered a "Biblical" option, where God either directly or through an intermediate pronounces his dissatisfaction with the mouldering mess the undead, monsters and demons have made of Creation. Again, I think a Christian game would have you take the rule of the avenging angels, rather than the recipients of God's butt-kicking, if you see what I am getting at.

Traditional vampires can kill their progenitor, which brings them to full strength. Is this true in this game? Generally, vampire "brides" cannot create new vampires - only the full strength master vampire.

As for killing the progenitor to gain "full strength," as I was saying, the idea of rising in the ranks of power through killing those above you and consuming them is a constant theme in the game. Those who are far enough down the vampire line (say 13th or 14th generation from Caine) are too weak in their blood potency to make their own follower vampires.

Another point about how the World of Darkness works is that you can't really trust what a vampire tells you or what you think you know about a particular vampire, as they are constantly manipulating the truth to their own ends. A Vampire could make up a story about how it was created, or create an elaborate ruse to throw opponents off its trail. Or simply let mythology and rumors swirl around it until someone else comes up with a completely crazy story that gets accepted as truth. And as humanity at large has no idea that vampire society exists, or that vampires are even real, there is no way for the average man on the street to ever find out the "truth."

For example, if I was a reasonably powerful blood-sucker, living in, say Romania, 500 years ago, it would be to my benefit not to let any of the human cattle know any truth about me. Maybe I would let them create elaborate stories about how I came to be that are completely false, but are repeated so often and with such growing detail that they get accepted as gospel truth. Maybe I would allow seeds of disinformation to spread, so they didn't know my true powers, limitations and weaknesses and so that my vampire opponents would get false impressions of me that could give me an edge in any eventual conflict. From a World of Darkness viewpoint, the conflicting information and discrepancies between different mythologies and literature would be desirable things.

In fact, the various game lines in the World of Darkness don't even agree on what happened in the distant past. European Vampires have one view of history, Eastern vampires another, Demons another, Werewolves, Changelings, Mages, Wraiths, etc., each have another.

 

[thormagni]

I think a better vampire game can be created, one which would allow for spontaneous, new vampires, such as exist in literature. Also one which leaves out the obvious Christian mindset and minimizes the Anne Rice type of vampire sissy.

And I don't know about a better vampire game, Vince. This is a pretty robust world that has spawned thousands of pages of supplementary, background information and supported probably a dozen or more separate game lines covering hundreds and thousands of years of history. It still is an extremely popular game, played second only to D&D last I heard.

That doesn't make it "good" obviously, but it does make it pretty thorough. And given that a half to two thirds of every World of Darkness book is pure fiction and background material, I suspect there has been more written about the World of Darkness vampires than any other vampire tale in history, except about Dracula himself. And in gaming, I suspect there has been more written about the WoD than any other setting except Forgotten Realms.

I think you would find, if you were to delve into the WoD that they have taken some thin strands of mythology and literature and wove them into a very thorough game world. It may not be your cup of tea, and it certainly isn't mine, but from what I have seen it is a very in-depth look into that particular world.

Look at it like this, when you start a new D&D campaign world, you set up the ground rules and the history of the world. Magic works like THIS, the countries of the world are THESE, psionics works or it does not, here are the gods of THIS world. Someone can't just step into that game world with a character that breaks all your house rules. At its heart, World of Darkness is only a game world, with decrees on: this is the way vampires work in this world, this is who Dracula was in this world, this is the history of this world, this is the mythology of this world.

Some of this was dictated by the limitations of the game they wanted people to play. How do you create a world where five, 10 or 20 people can all play vampire characters together? The WoD is White Wolf's answer to that question and it is an answer that works, generally speaking.

I don't really see it as that much different than if I was running a superhero game. Sure, one person could play Superman and everyone else could be the weaker superheroes, playing second fiddle to the big guy. Or I could come up with a way for everyone to play a character equal in power and plot importance, although not as individually capable as Superman. The second choice would generally make for a more interesting game for the most players. It doesn't mean Superman isn't still a cool character.