Updating the vampire

[maximara]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I have to agree. There needs to be a reason for vampires to not control the Earth. In GURPS terms, it could be explained that a vampire must exchange one or more levels of Will for a new Ally (the new vampire). While they could regain the Will through spending CP, they would be more vulnerable to other vampires until they do so, meaning that they would be reluctant to create new vampires.

The Anno Dracula series explores an alternate reality to the Dracula novel where Dracula becomes Prince Consort.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

That reluctance would translate to a low reproduction rate, so vampires would suffer to loss of one vampire more than humans would one human. Since vampires are inherently selfish creatures, they would expect other vampires to sacrifice themselves to expand vampire numbers. By the time that it became obvious that other vampires were not, their numbers would have been reduced to the point where hiding would have been advisable.

Interesting but if we go by the vampires in Blood Types which effectively followed an idea from Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter:

You see, Doctor, there are as many species of vampire as there are beasts of prey. Their methods and their motive for attack can vary in a hundred different ways. (...) Some can only be destroyed by hanging or decapitation, or fire or water, or by other means.

[Inky]

Which makes perfect sense, given that they "reproduce" "asexually", which usually means things diverge a lot. Each vampire inherits their vampire traits from one other vampire, no "gene mixing" occurs, so if anything changes at all it stays changed.

There's no need, in fact, to get too complicated about "why the vampires don't take over the world". Remember, Twilight made no sense about this whatsoever, as several previous posters have mentioned, and it was a big success, albeit that was probably for the sake of the romance rather than the adventure with most people. Buffy the Vampire Slayer before it also made no sense about this ("because of the Slayer" is exciting but obviously doesn't add up), and was also a huge success, even as an adventure story.

However, getting complicated about "why the vampires don't take over the world" is fun, so I'll join in.

This has already been discussed in the "Early Vampires" thread, and the stuff about new vampires being competition for food and it only working if the vampire can expect their "offspring" to be loyal to them still applies. The only difference is that these are different vampires with different properties so some of the issues are different.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Also...there had to be a first vampire to start the chain of 'infection'. Maybe there just haven't been actual vampires all that long, just a few centuries.

If there are more than one 'progenitor' vampires, then maybe there are vampire tribes, vampires 'descended' from different 'first vampires' and they don't get on. It might be that they never gained control of the world because as soon as one tribe starts to pick up power and I influence, the others combine against them and pull them down.

Which suggests that maybe vampires have been beaten to the verge of extinction, or even entirely wiped out, more than once in the past, but the scourge reappears when a new first vampire happens. A goal of the campaign might be to learn how first vampires happen and how to stop it. Maybe that the Ultimate Secret of the senior vampires.

That's like the older werewolf legends. If I remember rightly, they referred to two types of werewolf - sorcerers and others who had deliberately made themselves werewolves by black magic, and people who had been cursed to be werewolves, sometimes, though not always, by being bitten by one. The vampire equivalent might be something more like a "lich" in Dungeons and Dragons, somebody who deliberately cheated death by using magic to become a vampire. In this scenario, vampirism is a curse, not a species, and a curse that if it happened once might happen again.

Building on Maximara's "many types of vampire" idea, maybe being able to make other vampires could itself be a rare trait, with most "first vampires" being isolated incidents who don't have this ability, and those vampires being able to do the same "and so on ad infinitum" could be even rarer, and the appearance of a "first vampire" who is both powerful and able to "reproduce" might be a rare "perfect storm" event.

[AlexanderHowl]

You could have it that every new vampire takes their sire's vampire template, but they must make a Will roll when they are sired. On a success, they add (margin of success * 5) CP to their vampire template (doubled for a critical success), either in the form of added positive traits or removed negative traits. On a failure, they subtract (margin of success * 5) CP from their vampire template (doubled for a critical failure), either in the form of removed positive traits or added negative traits.

For example, Alice possesses Will 16 and find herself attacked one night after a party and sired by a default GURPS vampire. She rolls a '6' after being sired, which is a critical success, so she adds 100 CP to her vampire template. She removes Divine Curse (Cannot enter dwelling for first time unless invited) [-10], Draining (Human Blood; Illegal) [-10], Dread (Garlic) [-10], Dread (Religious Symbols, 5 yards) [-14], Dread (Running Water) [-20], Supernatural Features [-16], and Unhealing (Partial) [-20] from her template, increasing the cost of the template to 250 CP.

Conversely, Robert possesses Will 4 and finds himself transformed after a vampire after it feeds upon him while he is comatose from a heroin overdose. He rolls a '14', which is a critical failure, so he subtracts 100 CP from his vampire template. He removes HP+4 [8], Dominance [20], and Insubstantiality (Costs Fatigue, 2 FP, -10%) [72] from his template, decreasing the cost of the template to 50 CP.

[Inky]

That's good. Actual rules manifestation of that, and it sounds as if it would work well. I like that. (We'd been rather leaving actual GURPS behind.)

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

In GURPS terms, it could be explained that a vampire must exchange one or more levels of Will for a new Ally (the new vampire). While they could regain the Will through spending CP, they would be more vulnerable to other vampires until they do so, meaning that they would be reluctant to create new vampires.

That could work too.
Maybe it's like dividing a plant - to create a new vampire, the vampire must divide whatever it is that makes them a vampire, and thenceforward until it's "regrown" they don't have their full powers and neither does the "offspring".
A newly turned vampire might, for instance, not have any more strength or speed than a human, or even less. Building on what Johnny1A.2 said at the end of their posting, they might also not have the full intelligence that they had as a human until their powers have grown stronger (after all, they shouldn't be able to, they're dead). You could make the details of that be whatever works well for your story, whether mindless fanged zombies or, for example, articulate but lacking self-control or caution (like the Brides of Dracula). Only the vampires who'd already survived a certain length of time might be clever enough to be a long-term threat. Meanwhile the vampire who turned them might be suffering some degree of the same effects. Turning one person might be something that would take time hidden away in their lair to recover from. Turning a dozen at once to serve as instant cannon fodder might be right out.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Inky

Which makes perfect sense, given that they "reproduce" "asexually", which usually means things diverge a lot. Each vampire inherits their vampire traits from one other vampire, no "gene mixing" occurs, so if anything changes at all it stays changed.

Actually this isn't correct even in the mythology. Vampires producing offspring by "normal" means is one way how Half-Vampires (Dhampir) happen.

In fact, in classic Sterile was a -3 point disadvantage and yet none of the Blood Type vampires have this disadvantage. So everyone of them can have Dhampir children.

[Inky]

Oh, it seems to be very much a thing in the old legends, but rarely in the modern vampire stories this thread is talking about. (Odd that.) Was just talking about the likely results of the who-bit-who kind of "reproduction". If that's not how your setting is doing things then of course it would be a different matter.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Inky

Oh, it seems to be very much a thing in the old legends, but rarely in the modern vampire stories this thread is talking about. (Odd that.) Was just talking about the likely results of the who-bit-who kind of "reproduction". If that's not how your setting is doing things then of course it would be a different matter.

I know of two modern vampires that are part human:

Vampire Hunter D (1983-present)

Alucard von Mosquiton (Master of Mosquiton) set in 1920s for the manga and OVA and "present" (late 1990s) time for the TV series.

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, it depends. There are plenty of fantasy series (and webcomics like Sam and Fuzzy) where vampires are quite capable of sexual reproduction (sometimes it is the only way new vampires are born). Personally, I like thr idea of dhampyrs (half vampires) and I think that they should have an equal value template as vampires (the fact that they do not have many of the disadvantages of being a vampire is balanced by the fact that they do not have many of the advantages). For example, if we replace Sterile with Very Low Fertility (1% human normal) in the default GURPS vampire, the resulting dampers might look like this:

Dhampyr [150]

Dhampyr are born from the sexual reproduction between a human and a vampire. While the majority of vampires consume their mortal lovers before pregnancy would result, some female vampires do get pregnant and choose to allow their children to survive out of love and some male vampires fall in love with their female mortal lovers and create odd families with them. In any case, the resulting children are phenomenally gifted due to their hybrid nature, but they also suffer from poor impulse control due to their hybrid nature. If two Dhampyr reproduce, they will breed true, and fifty percent of the children of humans and Dhampyr will also be Dhampyr.

Attribute Modifiers: ST+4 [40]; DX+2 [40]; HT+2 [20]

Secondary Attribute Modifiers: Per+4 [20]

Advantages: Appearance (Attractive) [4]; Combat Reflexes [15]; Detect (Vampires) [5]; Extended Lifespan 3 [6]; Fit [5]; Luck [15]; Magery 0 [5]; Night Vision 5 [5]

Disadvantages: Bad Temper (12-) [-10]; Impulsiveness (12-) [-10]; Xenophilia (12) [-10]

Features: Low Fertility (10% human normal) [0]

[awesomenessofme1]

Yeah, vampires reproducing through actual sexual reproduction is going to be a massive no from me. They're undead; they're not going to be able to carry a child to term. They also pretty much universally don't age, so that's a major change you'd need to make. I do like dhampirs, though, but the kind that are created through pregnant women being infected or maybe cross-breeding between male vampires and human women.

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, that depends on the type of vampire. In popular fiction, I would actually say that vampires that cannot sexual reproduce are now outnumbered by ones that can reproduce. Even ones that normally cannot have the rare exception, like a pregnant woman being embraced in the last trimester who then gives birth to a premature baby that survives because it is a half-vanpire (such as Blade).