Well I''m not a huge fan of the vampire mythos, but I was reading a review of the apparently terrible Blood Omen game, and I got to thinking how I would do a vampire game. My idea is this: The player has two health bars: Spiritual Health and Physical Health. His spiritual health slowly decreases over time (say, 1 point per second) due to his need for blood to survive. If his spiritual health ever reach zero, he dies. Sucking the blood out of the living replenishes or raises his spiritual health (up to a point), and he can suck the blood of newly-dead corpses for a small raise to it. However, damage he receives affects only his physical health. His physical health can never exceed his spiritual health. It regenerates very quickly, since vampires heal quickly and it makes them hard to kill. But if his physical health ever reaches zero, then he enters a state in which his physical health stops regenerating, he cannot attack, and any damage inflicted on him is dealt to his spiritual health. If that reaches zero, of course, he dies. In this state, the vampire needs to hide somewhere and sleep. When resting, the vampire''s spiritual health will stop decreasing (but won''t increase either) and his physical health will replenish fairly quickly (10 or 15 seconds, say). The vampire cannot wake until his physical health is fully replenished, and if he gets attacked while resting, he dies instantly regardless of what his health is. It may sound sort of confusing, though it wouldn''t be in practice. Basically, the vampire will be tough and hard to kill, though he''ll need to drink blood often to survive. And if he gets severely wounded, he needs to run away and hide somewhere to recover - a lot like the movies. Though my vampire won''t be hurt by crosses or garlic or sunlight... I think that stuff is pretty dumb. Basically, he''s a vampire because he needs to drink the blood of the living or die. What do you guys think? ~CGameProgrammer( );

Another thought: When their spiritual health is high, the vampires will look human (aside from the fangs). As their spiritual health lowers, they grow more monster-like and less human-looking, like in the movies near the climax.

~CGameProgrammer( );

But then you get to a standstill. You say the physical health(PH) never excedes the spiritual health(SH). okay. what if your SH is half way (or just less than full) when you lose all PH? then you have to run(okay) and hide(okay) and sleep(okay) BUT (yes we all have one) when you sleep SH stops decreasing and doesnt increase(okay). how do you "revive" if you need to have full PH but the PH cannot be > SH? the only option would be to have the vampire sleep for a given amount of time(say 1hour game time == ~30 secs real time) then fully recharge both meters?
also the vampire would have to be either weaker in sunlight or the game would have to completely take place in the cover of night.which also yields a problem. a full night time game where the vampire must sleep for an hour when physically dead is conflicting. just my 2 cents :D

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If you whispered, who would hear you? If you cried, who would comfort you? If you begged, who would have mercy? If you program, who will play?
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It's funny because your ideas are quite good for someone who declares not knowing much about vampires

There is a large amount of existing litterature about vampires, some authors explaining more than others.
I like the series of books written by Laurell K Hamilton (Anita Blake series), with the progressive discovery of a lot of types of "monsters" (the vampires, but also the garou, the undead, the faeries, etc), their powers, and so on.

But if you want to play a vampire (and a few other things), you can look into Vampire: the Masquerade. It's the first (IIRC) Roleplaying game to have tackled vampires as Player Characters (before that there was Ravenloft for AD&D, but I am not familiar with it). And the success of the game has never decreased, since, quite the contrary.

A vampire (according to V:tM), gets his powers from the Blood. Blood is used as you would use magic points other games. It allows you to use special powers that each and every vampire has, and some other that are specific to some bloodline of vampires. Your bloodline is determined by your Sire, the vampire that Embraced you. In V:tM there is 13 major clans of vampires, plus a few that are supposed to have dissapeared (but of course, havent), each clan has specific powers (called Disciplines in V:tM linguo), and also a specific weakness. A weakness is something like not having a reflection (for the clan Lasombra), having to sleep in earth from place very important to them as mortals (like your birthplace) for the clan Tzimisce, etc.
Vampires also have to fight their inner Beast. As they live their unlives, they will slowly but surely lose their Humanity, and become more and more savage creatures, until maybe one day they turn into pure monsters, totally dominated by their Beast.

The system you describe is close enough to the rules in V:tM.
You got a Bloodpool whose size depends on the generation of the vampire. Each night, you lose a point of Blood naturally (to maintain yourself, if you will).
Blood is gained by draining other being from theirs, of course. Humans are practical, but it can be any other living being who has got blood in it, AFAIK. Sucking the blood from other preternatural creatures is a dangerous game, but that comes with great rewards. In the case of the blood of another vampire, if the vampire is of higher rank (lower generation), you become Bonded to him/her, which is a bad idea (of course, you can bind lower vampires of higher generation to you, too).
The Diablerie is a specific thing, where you suck anothe vampire dry of his blood, and then some more, absorbing his very soul (IIRC). This means you gain some of his abilities, especially if it was a lower generation vampire. You also lower your generation, which is a Good Thing.

If you have a question about the game mechanisms, I'd be happy to help.
However, if you want to know more about the background, I suggest you look at the official website. The presentation they give is fairly detailed and give you a good idea of what's in store.

Note : this game was adapted as a cRPG recently, Vampire the Masquerade. A pretty cool game it was, and it respected the original game very well IIRC. It had a dungeon master/multiplayer mode similar to what you have now in Neverwinter nights (although I havent played any of those, so I cant compare them).

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Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !


[edited by - ahw on August 25, 2002 9:11:15 PM]

I never played the Vampire: the Masquerade game, though it does sound interesting. I still think my idea would translate into good gameplay, but of course with background story elements it could really shine. Like, it doesn''t have to be called Spiritual Health and Physical Health - I just gave those names for this post to try to make it clear... before, I just thought of it as Maximum Hitpoints and Actual Hitpoints.

Bob_The_Fly: There is no standstill. I don''t mean that sleeping fully revives the vampire; I mean it sets his physical health equal to his spiritual health - in other words, as full as it can get at the moment. But there is no substitute for blood - you need it to survive, for having low SH seriously weakens you. Ordinarily it won''t be hard at all keeping your SH above 70%, you just need to kill things fairly often to get blood, and retreat if you get wounded until your PH regenerates (getting your PH down to zero is bad).

There may also be a way to store blood, like you can have vials which you fill with the blood of the recently slain, so you can save the blood for when you really need it.

I don''t think it''s necessary making a daylight penalty. Most criminals commit their crimes at night, but that doesn''t mean sunlight hurts them. It''s just that they''re less likely to get caught at night. The same goes for vampires. You can use your superhuman abilities (jumping high, etc.) and kill people and stuff during the day, but you''ll get caught and attacked quite quickly, so that''s not a great idea. During the day, stealth will be important - luring someone to an alley, and killing them then, instead of in the open. Whereas at night, you''ll have much more freedom - you''re less likely to get seen, and there are less people around. Also, since you appear monstrous as your SH lowers, you will really want a good SH during the day to help attract people (vampires are charismatic; in fact, I think there should be stats like Charisma, Agility, etc.).

~CGameProgrammer( );

Sounds excelent. Just some ideas:

First, while were on the daylight thing. I think some form of disadvantage from sunlight might be useful. Removal of an ability or strength or you could just take off Spirit Health. I''d remove defences if they were in the daylight, like make them more vunrible to turning and stuff (although you said they wern''t affected by crosses, garlic, perhaps daylight would be a good time to make an exception). The game could be made like theif in some places, where you avoid the light, both to avoid being seen but to avoid having your super-natural defences/powers dropped.

The other thing is the vampire dieing if he is sleeping and attacked. I think it may be better to have them lose health, but not die instantly.

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Just more precisions to relate to your original post :
in V:tM, you can use your Blood points to heal your wounds, but whn you run out of Blood, you take the increasing risk of going into frenzy. If you cant feed, you go into torpor (IIRC, i''d to check on that).
So this would relate to your system.

Also, the damage vampires take are different than a normal person, of course. For instance, there are two types of damage : normal damage, and aggravated damage. Both types of damage can kill a normal being, but not a vampire. Only aggravated can eventually kill them. Things that cause aggravated damages are stuff like fire, sun, and some other things, like Werewolves claws/fangs (in the World of Darkness universe, Werewolves are the ultimate close combat fighters, vampires dont stand a chance against them, but of course, they vampires have got their powers...)
Basically, to kill a vampire, you need to cause a lot of aggravated damage to them. Nothing really special, it''s just really hard to do, especially if you add the recuperating powers that Blood gives a vampire.
Staking them only paralyze them. Sun doesnt automagically make them die, but rather is causes aggravated damage, which means that just like in Buffy, you could picture a vampire covered with a very thick blanket running in the street (a la Spike, in one episode).

For vial of blood, yeah, that works pretty well. (I dont remember a restriction on blood having to be fresh, what matters is the origin of the blood).

Oh, as for the superstitious traditions (running waters, garlic, cross), they dont work. The only time a cross will work is if the holder of it has the True Faith (an Advantage, in game terms), and no, priests dont automatically have it. True Faith is quite uncommon, in fact.

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Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

I used to work on a mod for a game, all about vampires, but set in the future. The idea I had for handling the vampire aspect (being that the player was a good vampire who had no desire to kill mercilessly) was that the player had a ''blood lust'' bar. This bar would slowly rise, and if it reaches full,t he player enters a frenzied mode where he loses control of the player character. The player character then heads for the nearest blood source and drains it completely.

During the game the player coul feast on animals to reduce the blood and also could break into hospitals and other places to steal stored blood.

If desperate, the player could partially drain people, but this would cause panic and terror in anyone nearby, often resulting in getting shot.

The catch came in the vampire powers. While using the secial abilities, the list meter would fill faster, meaning the powers were a dangerous thing to over use.

The whole moral angle of not killing innocents came into play as the player was working for an anti-vampire underground movement that was trying to protect life and wipe out the vampire threat. So if the player went around sucking poeple dry all the time, he''d be kicked out of the movement and it''d be game over.

It''s a shame the mod never got completed - it had real potential. Although it could still go ahead as a mod for Deus Ex 2 next year.

That sounds like another good implementation of vampires, Damocles. My idea sort of embraced the evil vampire thing, but yours finds a way around it. But I can see a problem with the Frenzy mode - the AI-controlled frenzied player might walk into some dangerous situation and kill someone surrounded by others, guaranteeing the vampire''s death. Also the vampire might walk right into heavily armed guys and get killed before he can feed, unless you make a frenzied vampire invulnerable, but that''s not the best solution, I don''t think... plus you can''t do that with multiplayer.

~CGameProgrammer( );