Auspex, Celerity, Obfuscate, Animalism, Obteneration, Melpomine, Chimerstry, Protean, Dominate, Cachexy. Those are just 10 vampiric powers (Disciplines) from VtM/VtR that came immediately to mind, without pulling out either book, out of what must be a couple dozen total, spread over the entire oeuvre of these two games. The point is simple: vampires have awesome powers, and White Wolf has made a huge point of statting up the classical ones from lore as well as creating a host of new supernatural abilities for the blood drinkers. People like the powers of a vampire; besides immortality (and really, that’s just power #1), it is all these nifty tricks that folks attracted to roleplaying creatures of the night find appealing. It’s what makes the trade-off of subsisting on blood acceptable: you gain in return a number of powers that truly set you above the mundane humans!
I won’t deny it, when I played Vampire, it was the powers that I found most appealing. I played a Ravnos vampire just because their Discipline of Chimerstry, the ability to create illusions. My players spent about 90% of their Experience Points on improving Disciplines, on becoming stronger, more powerful, in those dark gifts bestowed them by the Beast. Vampiric powers are an essential part of the vampire myth, and as such, something I need to include in my rebuild of the game.
But how?
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If (as always, in my experience) Vampire had another underutilized game mechanic in addition to Humanity, this was Willpower. Yes, we used it to boost up rolls and such, but it just never had the oomph that it seems that it should have. I take some of that responsibility myself as the Storyteller; I rarely, if ever, pushed my characters to the brink of having to use their Willpower, nor did I force the scenes that I should have in order for them to recover spent points. It just sort of existed there.
In rereading the section on Willpower in VtM, I realize that it was mostly me; the advice is there on how to use it, I just didn’t quite heed it. Willpower is even better explained in VtR, I have to say, though I still feels like it doesn’t delve deep enough into what Willpower can truly mean for a vampire story (this, when it comes to VtR, seems to be a side-effect of the main book + monster setting book approach; the former has to keep it fairly generic, the latter can’t change it so much as to invalidate the core book).
Willpower, to me, is a driving force, and a very limited force at that. It’s what gives you the inner gumption to push back the darkness, but there’s only so much of it to go around, so much you can take before that reserve is depleted. That’s what the beast wants. That’s what I, as game designer, want as well.
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Though I’ve been silent for some time now because of classes and then finals, I’ve kept the Vampire project (it remains untitled and I really need to find a way to refer to it) alive in my head all this time. Maybe not front burner, but certainly slow cooker-simmering to the side. I can’t help it, really, not even with the other stuff I have going, like Ierne: Celtic FATE or my new obsession with the Colonial Gothic RPG and American Colonial/Revolutionary history.
One of the things that I’ve most been giving though to in between study sessions of human physiology (or perhaps because of it?) is the concept of damage as it relates to a vampire character. Both Vampire games go for the very traditional “hit point” approach: a vampiric character, much like every other character in the World of Darkness, has health boxes to track damage received. As they get checked off, health decreases until it either sends the vampire into torpor or, if it’s aggravated damage, it kills the character. In the WoD, because of the mechanical distinction made between normal and aggravated damage, this work ok; vampires can shake off fairly easily most damage, as it is mundane in origin and no match for their healing abilities, but aggravated damage really puts the squeeze on them, making them face mortality a second time. Yeah, it works for Vampire, but the more I think about it, the more I know that this isn’t what I want for my game. Or rather, I should perhaps say, this isn’t what I want for my game entirely.
I do want a way to track damage received by the character, but I’m far less interested in knowing how many more hits can the character take than what effect the hits already taken have had. I want to know how the damage the character has taken is affecting her and her circumstance, if that explosion at the night club she just escaped from did more than just singe her skin: did it destroy her reputation with the Blood Conclave, or cost her best (mortal) friend’s life, or both? I want damage to be a catalyst for enhanced drama. I don’t want a record of wounds, I want a record of consequences.
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It’s not Spring Break yet so no new design posts from me. However, I think you should take a look at the posts I am linking to below.
Nothing happens in a vacuum, especially not creative endeavors, and since I both send links to my design posts to Twitter, as well as “think out loud” there, it is inevitable that a network of influences would eventually emerge. Take for example last week: I’m not sure how it started, but for some reason, my Twitter feed last week was awash in a number of conversations about the World of Darkness, both old and new. Over the five days of the work week, there was not one day when at least a handful of World of Darkness-related tweets flew by, sparking conversations and blog posts.
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It’s midterms this week so I’m taking a break from game design thinking. You can follow the posts in this series so far by checking out the tag “Rebuilding Vampire.”
In lieu of more design, I’d like to quickly address a couple of things, just to be clear to myself mostly, though others may find this useful as well.
First the caveat.
I think I already said this in a previous post, but it bears repeating to be 100% crystal clear:
I love Vampire: The Masquerade to undeath. Really, to little tiny bits. Thus, this game that’s emerging as I write along is *not* me saying “VtM Sucks!” Not even by a long shot. This *is* me saying, “VtM had some things that I felt got lost in the shuffle and here’s me trying to bring them back to the spotlight in my own way.” The latter does not detract from the former. If I wanted to be more dramatic in my answer, I’d say that this game is both my reply, and love letter, to VtM, my way of saying, “You made me think about these things, here’s what I thought of them; thanks so much, and enjoy the gift.”
Now the self-deprecation.
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As I have already mentioned, at the crux of the tragic story of the vampire is the fact that they are on a downward spiral towards damnation, destined to destroy all that they held dear. If you read through the comments on the previous two posts in this series you will find that over and over we keep going back to the simple, and very important, idea of why should one care about the vampire’s journey on the road of dwindling Humanity. Or put another way, why should I (the player of the vampire character) care about the loss of Humanity? Why stall it? Why not give in to the beast?
There are traits in the two Vampire games that sort of deal with this. In VtM we have the traits of Nature and Demeanor, which basically sum up what your behavioral essence is on the inside and how you project yourself to the world. These are good to help shape how you want to play your character, but they really don’t say much about who your character is, which ultimately is what we’re driving at when looking for the reasons to cling to Humanity. VtR uses Virtue and Vice to replace Nature/Demeanor. I like the contrast of these two traits because, while they can help you shape how you play the character, they now say something about who this character is, if maybe a bit indirectly. The Virtue/Vice split also hearkens back to classical philosophical thought, something I can totally dig. Both of these sets of traits, however, have the same drawback for me: they are too vague. This is great for the games in which they are used, as a limited number of combinations can be used to represent virtually endless characterizations across a number of games sharing the same basic system, but for what I’m seeking to do, I want something that’s a hell of a lot more focused.
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