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TheTome /
TheHallowedCouncilOfRoleplayingYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. Welcome, all ye who come here to discuss, debate and argue.For you have entered the sacred and academic halls of Roleplaying, and within these walls, we push the boundaries of roleplaying knowledge, decide on new facets for us to explore... Actually...This is a discussion page about RP issues in general. This is not meant to be a full-time, community-list, discussion forum-type thing. It can be, but that's if we want it to. Otherwise, we can just get rid of it... It hink it would be a good thing to have, givent he amount of traffic the Wiki has, and how people usually (should?) gravitate towards the RecentChanges page, it could be quite easy to keep up to date and informed... I propose a (vague) format as follows - Your Wiki name - The thread you're talking aboutYour comments, followed by a line AvatarOfBrendan? - Opinion Poll on several things...OK, for the first thread, I want some opinions on the following -
Why? Because I'm insane. Also, because I am in the process of designing a game of my own (as some of you may or may not know) about vampires, trying to come up with a different spin on the World of Darkness type that everyone seems to love. Plus, GarethMojo mentioned that he hadn't really seen any really goos sci-fi/cyberpunk games around. Of course, me being the smart-ass that I am, had a "brain-wave" of combining the two, to create a Blade-2039-type feel. Could be interesting. Of course, what I think is a good idea, others may think is crap, and if that's the case, no-one will buy the book. GarethMojo - Point/CounterpointI love cyberpunk style games. I just fucking hate the systems (the two primary ones I know of are Shadowrun and Cyberpunk. Both are hugely flawed). What I would dig is a cyberpunk game run under a decent system - Unknown Databases, anyone? Problem is that abstracts out too easily the very real effects of wiring yourself up. There's gotta be more of a system-based advantage (or at least effect) of being a 'borg. Then again, there shouldn't need to be if you've got a good bunch of RP'ers. AvatarOfBrendan? - Yes, YES!!Ahem. I do agree with you, GarethMojo, on several points - one, vampires a la Blade are kewl, and the born/embraced bit sucks big dick; two, the ancient symbols in the modern world is cool; three, it is funny how the systems of the games you mentioned (I can't think of any others either) do in fact suck... I have been trying to get a slick, UA style system down. As far as "cyberware" goes, I was thinking along the lines of a synthetically-made organic material that the human body doesn't reject - implanting metal components into the body was always a bit of a scientific enigma to me. This material (Synth TM) has allowed a vague sort of cyberware to appear - combining Synth TM to muscles to strengthen them, adding it to bones to reinforce them... Synth TM also allows electrical current to pass through it, much like the human body does, so it also allows for vision and hearing modifications, as lenses can be placed in the aqueous humour of the eyes, and activated by an electrical impulse from a "button" somewhere on the body... Cloning... what's the current state of that now? DrMikenstein? - Getting involved because I can, damn it!Don't really have time to discuss the pros-and-cons of various systems, but I did once see a veery interesting take on the whole futuristic-vampire concept. It borrowed fairly heavily from the film "Blade Runner" in terms of style and atmosphere, but the basic idea focused on vampires (playing the equivalent role of replicants in the dynamics) who had been enhanced and altered by technology so as to reduce and sometimes remove their more "traditional" weaknesses. Several corporations were involved in this little cyberfang debacle, funding the research both in attempt to learn more about these creatures (and try to unlock the "immortality gene" - if such a thing existed), as well as effectively creating their own supernaturally-strong operatives for a little...competitive advantage. Conversely, the traditionalist vampires were trying to fight this "new wave" of vampire culture, both because they feared and distrusted the technology involved, and because they didn't want the corps to gain access to the roots of vampiric power. In the midst of all this, a few unlucky humans (the "Runners" of this story) were trying to track and destroy any undead they could, but having more and more trouble doing so as the barrier between alive and undead got thinner and thinner... What I thought was interesting about this world-concept was that it combined both of Gareth's two-vampire-styles, and it also took a different angle to the usual (ie. Masquerade) hidden-vampire saga. In this world, most of the populace knows about vampires, but it's getting harder and harder to tell them apart from humans. The end result is a nice blend of the McCarthy? trials and the Salem Witchhunts, with people petrified of the beastie lurking around the corner. As for cloning? Haven't got a clue, I'm afraid. AvatarOfBrendan? - My proposed take on vampires...I just want to put up a brief thing about my proposed take on vampires, so that you guys can give me your opinions/ideas. So here goes... Synth TM has caused revolutions in the biomedical area, and this has shifted the focus away from physics, to the extent that the predominant physics models are still Quantum Mechanics and Superstring Theory. In terms of Quantum Theory, it can be argued that the cat of observation leads to a collapse of the wave function of a set of superimposed probable events (Schrodinger's Cat), leaving one event there, which is what we actually observe. So, in essence, it is our consciousness that effectively collapses the wave function. Now, think of your consciousness as one of those old telephone swithboards: the switchboard is covered with different plugs, which send you to different telephone lines; your consciousness if the switchboard, your body is the jack you use. Your consciousness exists throughout the universe, with your body being the physical aspect it's currently jacked into. Because our consciousness extends across boundaries, and it also collapses wave functions, if we are able to enhance our consciousness, we can cause things to occur simply by collapsing a wave function - this effectively entails action-at-a-distance (confirmed by the EPR Paradox and Bell's Theorem). Read "magick". Telepathy, psychometry, telekinesis, etc. So, what happens when you suddenly and unexpectedly die? Your consciousness leaves your body, your body dies. You get that out-of-body thing. Now, in this moment of massive trauma, some of us are able to focus their consciousness, and since they don't want to die, collapse a probable wave function at the terminal/pivotal event, and put their consciousness back in their bodies. Which get up. Badaboom, badabing, you have a "vampire". My current ideas include vampires using their emotions, which are intricately linked to their consciousness, as the source of their powers. Furthermore, vampires can walk around in the sunlight (although this becomes an impossibility the older one gets), automatically heal up, don't have fangs (they use the tongue instead, to draw blood to the surface of the skin) and aren't pale, angst-filled corpses. OK, I lied about the corpse bit. Furthermore, they can't be Synth'd-up, because Synth is also an organic, albeit artificial, material. Synth just doesn't work. Hint: they're dead. PS: Regarding the state of cloning currently; I did some research, and we haven't cloned humans yet, and aren't able to, but animals have worked fine: Dolly, the sheep, bulls, etc. have al been cloned. Thus, in my setting, humans still haven't been cloned (they just lack that, that... something (read: consciousness). Human body parts, however, are down to a fine science. Except the brain. Still struggling with that one... Whaddayathink? DrMikenstein? - Quantum Dead PeopleAs I'm sure I've mentioned before, I think the whole emotionally-charged vampire idea is tres cool (Even worthy of French, you'll note.) One point I'd raise about your whole Quantum-as-magic-theory, is that there's going to be a need to explain why some people are able to re-channel their consciousness(es?) as return as vampires and not just every Tom, Dick and Dracula. After all, I'm sure some people do die with a contented: "Oh, well. I had a good run. I wonder if you need to brush your teeth in heaven?", but they're definitely in the minority! So why doesn't everyone who doesn't want to die return as a vampire? And if you work on the theory of it being some kind of major trauma or "unfinished business" that causes people to come back as vampires, then you're treading dangerously close to that WW angst-filled corpse route you wanted to avoid. Angst score, anyone? Just a thought. GarethMojo - EigenstatesOne problem with using eigenstates (possible states for a given quantum wave function) and observer theory to explain unnatural events - there are just too damn many of them. If we had selective collapse of states, just about anything is possible. Anything. From turning people into cheese to hurling fireballs. These events aren't impossible - just very unlikely. If we restrict people into only collapsing to "near-probable" eigenstates, you limit magic to just unusual circumstances... however, this would still be very cool. From the simple guessing the password to the vault (only 1 in 16 billion) to the opening retinal scanners by lucky random surges in the electronics. Kind of like coincidental magick in Mage. If people can collapse themselves upon death (even if only in certain circumstances) why just collapse and form vampires? Surely, just as unlikely/likely are any number of other mythological creatures. Hell, straight resurrection is more rational (and therefore more likely as an eigenstate) than being brought back as somekind of parasite. But never-the-less, it's an interesting idea to play with. I suspect Brendan's read the same book I have: Quarantine by Greg Egan. Covers this flavour of quantum mechanics in good detail - actually a very entertaining little piece of science fiction. Give it a read to better understand what the fuck we're talking about. Oh - and in any cyber-punk world I create will damn well have funky cosmetic mods. Like cat-girls. Don't ask... it's just one of those things. Watch Monkeybone if you really need to. ElfBoy - QM, Cloning, Vampires of the FutureOddly enough, I've also been thinking of taking another look at vampires, although from a very different angle. A pet peeve of mine is that modern vampires always seem completely unable to grok technology. While the hunters are often packed to the gills with modern tech, the vampires continue to use the old teeth in neck trick. As pointed out in a classic episode, a nine millimetre can be quite useful in securing an invitation from reluctant hosts. Not to mention how handy those bulletproof vests with ceramic plates are when someone tries to stake you. Or how much fun it is to be immune to sleeping gas. I should write a page for the ClawWiki on QuantumMechanics? and related topics. But it'll have to wait until I have oodles of free time. For now, Bell's Theorem states that (under a few pretty reasonable assumptions) either information can travel faster than light or quantum mechanics has no underlying classical interpretation. I think most physicists now believe the latter - i.e. that quantum mechanics is the one true way. Similiarly, I think many physicists believe that the wave function does not collapse - the classical world we think we live in is really just a fairly accurate (for massive enough objects) model that arises naturally from the underlying quantum model (which is accurate for a larger set of physical situations). Not that all this should in anyway stop you from going ahead with your idea, I'm mentioning it just for interest. On the cloning front, the major problem is that the techniques for getting a full set of DNA from the individual to be cloned into an appropriate egg cell are currently rather unrefined. Different techniques are need for different animals and it's pretty much hit-and-miss as to whether the insertion actually works. I think Dolly was cloned by taking an entire nucleus from the cell of a living sheep and inserting the nucleus into an egg cell, rather than just transfering the DNA. It's important to remember that in addition to the DNA stored in the cell nucleus, some organelles (for example, mitochondria) have their own DNA. These won't be transferred in a simple nucleus transfer but vary less from person to person (since they're passed down entirely through the female side of the ancestral tree). They may cause problems in the cloning of extinct animals (since intact mitochondria might not be available and it'll be difficult to transfer them anyway). MyrdemInggala - Vampiric technoprimatesFurry! Furry! (Er, Gareth, not Simon. Gareth's comment was at the bottom when I wrote this.) Moving right along... a vampire peeve of mine (and Simon's) is the inexplicable unwillingness of vampires in certain settings (cough Buffyverse cough) to use modern weaponry. (Hmph. I'd like to see how long the Slayer would last against twenty vamps with sniper rifles taking pot-shots off the top of a building. But nooooo. That would ruin the premise.) It seems lots of people just pick these critters up and plonk them in the modern day without considering that they would have adapted to the changing world. Write more later. Must go now. DrMikenstein? - Insane Buffy Trivia Geek alertBecause I'm sick (in the head), I'm going to have to point out that in Buffy Season 1, episode 5 (Title:Angel), Darla (Angel's sire) sported a nice shiny pair of Berettas which she used fairly effectively to nearly riddle the Buffster with lead. And in Season 3, Mr Trick sent a pair of gunwielding German soldiers after her. Ahem. And now on with the actual point. Re: Vampires and heavy weapons It's true that a lot of times, vampires are portrayed as technomorons in a variety of settings/worlds, but there is a fair justification. a) Why bother? They've got supernatural strength, speed and stamina and (fairly often) hypnotic powers. Using bullets means all that lovely blood'll leak out... b) Hunters with modern tech vs. vampires without. In the average hunters vs vamps scenario, the hunters are prepared. They're going up against lethal undead predators, so of course they pack heavy ordinance. The vamps aren't. They just saunter around every night, kill a person or two, never expecting a bunch of stake-happy GI Joes freaks to descend on them. And like the average vamp NEEDS a weapon to drain some hapless meal. In fact, generally, the more organised vampires are portrayed, the more often they do pack heat ie. Blade, White Wolf. The same as humans. Your average man on the street doesn't carry a 9mm, but a team of soldiers would carry a hell of a lot more! It's more a function of how the vampires are portrayed. If they're solitary predators, carrying weapons is matter of personal taste, and fairly unnecessary for night-to-night hunting. If they have some kind of fully-organised society, then they get weapons and tools to defend that society. I reference Blade again: in the nightclub massacre at the beginning of the film, most of the vampires there are basically blood-thirsty ravers. When Mr Swirly Coat appears, they alternately run or panic and try to attack He of the Long Leather. Splattering ensues. Then a bunch of more organised vampires do appear - several carrying guns. These are the vamp equivalent of bouncers, so they do pack heat. Despite this, splattering ensues (since Blade is the prophesised super-vamp...blah...blah) It's matter of portrayal whether vampires whip out their Uzis or not. NOTE: Please ignore the film "John Carpenter's Vampires" while considering what I've mentioned, since it does feature exactly the kind of stupid, techomoron vampires mentioned above. But it's just such a manky film that I don't think it's at all relevant. This also goes for Dusk 'Till Dawn 1(and 2 and..oh,dear god, 3) ElfBoy - Vampity, Vamp, Vamp.Well, so that makes it twice in like 6 or 7 seasons for Buffy. The argument that vampires are superhuman and thus don't need guns (or other technology for that matter) doesn't hold much water with me. Vampires kill people for a living. Killing people makes enemies. Enemies come and hunt you down. Any vampire with half a brain would at least have a decent home security system. Plus, if you hang out with other blood-thirsty supernatural creatures, it pays to ensure that you have the advantage. Face it, vampires aren't like normal humans. They're part of an anarchistic subculture where the laws of modern society don't apply and the strongest rule. To ignore the massive advantage technology has to offer is suicidal. Blade was horrible - mostly as a result of the dialog. Anyway, although the vampires do have guns, none of them seem able to aim straight and I remember watching the final scenes going use-the-fucking-gun-you-moron alot. Mostly, the excuse seems to be that vampires are stupid - which I feel is pretty lame. Not only don't they have guns, but they often seem unable to realise that people with guns can kill them. I refuse to believe that every vampire is an egotistical megolomaniac who thinks they can't be killed. What about the paranoid, insecure vampires? Or the kung-fu survivalist gun-nuts? Or the vampiric hackers? Lastly, the non-guns issue is really only a minor one as far as Buffy is concerned. I have much bigger problems with Buffy. But I'll leave those for a time when they're on topic. :) MyrdemInggala - More on weapons; Scientific vs fantastic vampire explanationsRegarding weapon use by the average vampire - I agree with Simon. Obviously a vampire wouldn't use a gun on a helpless snack - but he'd have one to defend himself against the vampire hunters which he should be expecting to be around. Carrying only melee weapons (hands and teeth) when you can expect your opponents to have both melee (stake; sword for decapitation; torch) and ranged (crossbow; flamethrower) weapons is criminally stupid when powerful, easy-to-use ranged weapons are freely available. And here's that ]] which nicely illustrates our point. Back to the original discussion regarding the nature of vampires: I like my vampires fantastic. I have found pretty much all attempts to rationalise the vampire myth to be somewhat dodgy pseudoscience. The ones where vampires are energy-draining aliens seem to work best - but that requires them to drain energy, not blood. I like the whole blood thing as a fantasy concept. Given that, I have various likes and dislikes about the existing vampire settings. For a start, I think it goes without saying that anyone proposing the pyramid-scheme model of vamping should be dragged out into the street and shot. Fortunately, most of the moderm settings use the realistic exchange-of-blood mechanism. I also like White Wolf's ghouls, the decrease in power down the generations and the increase in power as a result of draining a more powerful vampire. I like the invitation rule. It is used very well in Buffy, and I think it would be a cool thing to have in a roleplaying setting. Of course, this rule is only justifiable if your vampires are fantastic. Likewise, the no-reflection phenomenon and the crossing-running-water rule are cool fantasy things often left out of modern settings. (The running water thing could be interpreted in interesting ways - for example a vampire could be permanently confined to an area if it was completely bounded by rivers - if you stuck him on a plane and tried to fly him out, he'd explode or spontaneously combust as you crossed the boundary.) I don't know how the cross thing should be handled. If vampires fear crosses because they're holy, then they should fear other religious paraphernalia as well. If they fear them because of something inherent in the shape, then they should by rights never venture out of the crypt, since that shape can be found just about anywhere. I'm inclined to favour the former - that also allows for holy water and various other ritual artifacts. Garlic. Mmmm, garlic. If vampires are poisoned by garlic, they should also have unpleasant reactions to other members of the onion family. Although possibly not as strong. Sunlight. I like the "direct natural sunlight bad" rule. It is simple and makes sense. Allowing UV to hurt vampires implies that their reaction is a physical and not a supernatural phenomenon - which I don't think makes sense. You've got to have a pretty bizarre physical structure in order to burst into flames under UV light for normal scientific reasons. :P Are there any other anti-vampire agents I'm forgetting? AvatarOfBrendan? - My new update R.E. - The weapons issue: I'm kind of split between both camps (Mike's and Simon/Adrianna's). Yes, vampires are supernatural predators, with mor ethan enough mystic power to fuck up anyone hunting them down. However, I also believe that if that approach is taken, you will soon run out of "mystic power" taking all the bullets, etc. and get shot to shit. Bye-bye, Mr. Bad-Vampire-Man. Given the futuristic setting of my proposed game, weapons would be quite prevalent, and reasonably cheap (the dark gritty world of the Future). Thus, relying on your vampiric powers will get you dead quite quickly. However, in a shootout, a vampire has a big advantage (in its powers) than your normal, un-Synth'd human. A Synth'd-up human, has an advantagem but a smaller one than a vampire. R.E. - the vampiric powers issue: These are the vampiric powers and characteristics I have been considering. First off, and most "controversially", my vampires aren't that affected by sunlight! Sunlight is an inconvenience, and irritating, but it won't turn you into Kentucky-Fried-Vampire. If you remain in the sun for extended periods, you start to age, because as a vampire, your body's dead, and thus the natural defences you have against sunlight's aging effects aren't present. Of course, the older you get as a vampire, the quicker you age in shorter periods of exposure, until the ancient vampires are truly nocturnal. Second "controversial" element: no fangs! Yes, I use the pseudoscientific "energy" explanation, but that energy is most readily accessible in blood. So vampires drink blood. How? Their tongues. Primarily. The tongue has several symbolic connotations, and thus many vampires subconsciously, and through their teacher's philosophy/outlook/treachings/lectures, twist their consciousness into allowing their tongue to draw blood to the surface of the skin, and feed from it there. However, some vampires, who are cruel, hateful, and/or just plain nasty/psychotic, come up with the traditional fangs bit. More on psyche/emotions later. Thirdly, vampires heal automatically. Their consciousness's (still programmed to initiate the healing process automatically) automatically use up whatever energy (via blood) is available in the vampire's body to heal up injuries. Arm blown off; reattach it and you're fine. Or feed huge amounts, wait several years, and you'll have a new one. Get shot up? Get and return fire, 'cos you've just repaired all the wounds. Vampires have no control over this power. Fourthly, as Mike mentioned in one of his earlier posts, my vampires are powered by emotions. Since the consciousness is what is driving the vampire's existence, and the consciousness incorporates feelings and emotions, these affect the consciousness. Thus, the vampire is able to use those emotions to generate powers. If he's feelings superior and invincible, he will pick up a car with a fair amount of ease. If he is really pissed off, and wants to physically intimidate someone, he will also be able to pick up a car, or do soem other physical feat of strength with ease. Alternatively, if he's really pissed off, watch him move around at rapid speed, and just watch everything burn! Similarly, if a vampire's feeling sexy, she can exude that aura/feeling, and attract others to her. If the vampire has genuine concern for the person, she might be able to heal them. You get the idea. Currently, I really like this idea, 'cos it's really different. I'm working on the exact nature of this in game terms, and whether it works like Mage: the Ascension (i.e. one emotion can do anything related to the emotion, and very free-form), or more like Vampire (with structured powers at certain levels). What I was thinking, is that you acquire levels of the emotion/s; the more you feel or experience the emotion, the higher your level gets. When you use powers related to that emotion, you burn off some of the emotion, and you lose levels. Sometimes, your levels become permanent, and you get side-effects (red eyes, permanent fangs, unabiding hatred/lust/depression/superiority-complex/etc., etc.). I have just come up with a new way of becoming a vampire, and a way that answers/solves Mike's well-spotted problems (see his "Quantum Dead People" post). You become a vampire by being made one. Your "maker" (for the time-being) either informs you of what's going to happen, or he doesn't. He then basically kills you. He, having experienced the out-of-body-slash-I-just-died-thing, is able to extend his consciousness outside his body, while also maintaining a presence in the body (and also with investing some emotions of secutiry/care/help/"I fucking own you" into the mix). This puts him in danger of dying, permanently, as well. He then guides you back to your body, and voila, you have a vampire. While you are collapsing wave-functions, etc. and you could theoretically turn into a block of cheese, I believe that practically, that would not be possible, since there is a sizable diference between you and a block o cheese. As such, while the primal force of Entropy allows that change to occur, Order maintains the balance by restricting what you can change into. So, no werewolves, no pools of sludge, no Mages, no psychics (these are possible, but not through this method; more through self-actualization, and other Psychology/HR bullshit), no blocks of human cheese. Right, now that my magnum opus is done, you can all tell me what you think... PS: I have not read "Quarantine" by Greg Egan. Sorry :) PPS: Thank you all for posting, and for helping me brainstorm through all this, and laugh along the way too. You will all be in the credits of my game! Please keep it posting! PPPS: And finally, introducing TheFurryPage, for all your "furry" needs... Sorry guys, the cat make-up, and the "furry art"... it don't fit in with a vampire page! :) But, it now has it's own page! More furry stuff than you can shake a stick at!! Yaaay! AvatarOfBrendan? - Becoming a Vampire... And other bits I left out last time. Also, as vampires get to the very old stage, they are no longer constrained by the taking of blood. They require large amounts of energy by this stage, but are able to take that energy without requiring huge amounts of blood. They are able to actually siphon off the energy from those they are around, or interact with. Walk through a mall or city centre at prime trading time, and you're made! Right, I will add more updates as I go. Please don't stop posting. I need feedback! give me your ideas!! |