What system for Dracula as horror?

[Morrus]

The new BBC mini-series is fantastic, and it makes me want to play a game where vampires are particularly horrific. Not tragic romantic figures like Strahd, or American high-school dating vampires, but really horrible evil vampires, pure remorseless sociopathic evil.

A mix of investigation and survival horror.

The players play vampire hunters or victims, a vampire is really dangerous, and PCs may well die. Dracula is the big bad who the PCs probably won’t go up against, but around the world there are other vampires. Period piece, gaslight, etc.

• infiltrating a vampire’s castle
• survival horror on a ship like the Demeter as the vampire picks them off one by one
• solving a spate of killings in Victorian London

Right now I feel like reskinning the new Alien RPG could work, especially with its focus on the stress mechanic. I’d need to design vampires in place of the aliens, but they could fill much the same role. A PC vs a vampire should be suicidal; you're not supposed to fight them like that.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Umbran]

Hm. Night's Black Agents works if you want to work the conspiracy angle.

White Wolf allows for charismatic vampires, but it also works for monstrous ones. Use Hunter, or just core WoD for humans against the more monstrous types of WW vampires. Also, remember that there's a morality track... make all your vamps far down that road to monstrosity, and the same track for PCs can be used for their degradation with exposure to horrors...

 

[JeffB]

BRP/COC is the obvious.
Hunter: The Reckoning
Chill
Ravenloft- using the DoD book(?) where PC's are residents of the domains and not S&S characters trapped by the mists. And didn't TSR do a Gothic period box as well?
Beyond the Supernatural
Monster of the Week Revised (tone down the playbooks a bit to comp for more mundane characters)

 

[JeffB]

P.S. That looks awesome- I'll have to check it out.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Maybe Kult: divinity lost. Would take a lot of work with the worldbuilding though

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Night's Black Agents is exactly suited for this; customizable vampires at whatever level of deadly you like are very easy and it's set up for a very gritty world. The default time period is modern, and when I ran it most off the scenarios were with highly competent (think Jason Borne) ex-agents using high-tech solutions versus remorseless killers.

In one scene the players actually managed to kill an old, feeble vampire and then were hunted down by that vampire's daughter. They hid in a house and refused her permission to enter, so she summoned a lot of London Zoo's animals to attack and started throwing cars through the walls at the characters as they tried to survive. Fun times.

I also ran flashback scenarios with Bram Stoker's brother in war-torn Eastern Europe, and a Le Carré style scenario with a defecting Romanina ballet company set in the 70s. All of these were from materials from the game. There are mountains of material available, so as long as you are happy with a pretty gritty, investigative style game with a focus on realism (or "movie-style realism") I can't imagine this isn't the go-to choice.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The Dracula Dossier stuff for Night's Black Agents seems like a pretty spot on choice.

I've recently picked up a copy of Esoteric Enterprises, and that might fit the bill. I'm still reading it, but it definitely has this kind of material in mind.....it's kind of an OSR take on a World of Darkness like setting. It's nominally set in the modern day, but there's no reason it couldn't be altered a bit to be a period piece.

 

[Morrus]

The Dracula Dossier stuff for Night's Black Agents seems like a pretty spot on choice.

I've recently picked up a copy of Esoteric Enterprises, and that might fit the bill. I'm still reading it, but it definitely has this kind of material in mind.....it's kind of an OSR take on a World of Darkness like setting. It's nominally set in the modern day, but there's no reason it couldn't be altered a bit to be a period piece.

Emmy Allen was in my house today and we discussed that very topic.

 

[moriantumr]

While not an easy or direct port, Dark Heresy or WFRP could give you the tools to do your idea about a spate of killings in Victorian London. You could easily keep your pc’s from picking up too much combat power just by limiting their equipment access. I might just need to do something like this with my group come Halloween time. Bonus points if you reskin the ratcatcher in WFRP as a batcatcher.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Emmy Allen was in my house today and we discussed that very topic.

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.