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View Full Version : If you were Dracula who would you turn?



(Un)Inspired
2015-01-31, 02:51 PM
I'm currently running a campaign that features characters from campaigns I've run over the past five years for my players. It's sort of an epilogue chapter for all the different adventures they've had.

One of the precursor campaigns was a Mask of Red Death campaign in which Dracula took over control of San Francisco around the turn of the century.

The party was unable to thwart him and thus he was free to gain power of the past hundred years or so.

My question for you is:

If you were Big D, who from the twentieth century would you turn into a vampire lieutenant?

Who do you think would be pol to see as a vampire? What do you think Dracula would look for in a person?

After I'm got a good list of people I'm gonna actual build them and pit my party against them (Eventually).

Flickerdart
2015-01-31, 04:10 PM
World leaders are a pretty obvious choice - many of them reside in houses that are technically publicly owned (hell, there are often tours of the buildings, so securing an invitation would be super simple). Modern security systems aren't really prepared to handle a guy who can turn into fog.

Now, this doesn't work super-well in liberal democracies because the process needs to be repeated once or twice every decade. Various lower-level public servants and military staff who can command quite a lot of power but have no term limits, as well as leaders with indefinite re-elections work much better for this.

In the modern world, the skills of an individual would be super unimportant compared to the influence the individual's position comamnds.

HunterOfJello
2015-01-31, 04:19 PM
I would turn Flickerdart.

Corsair
2015-01-31, 05:46 PM
If I'm making a bid to take direct control of the mortal world? Leadership in intelligence agencies. Get the Directors of the FBI, CIA, and NSA under your thumb and you've got all you really need to begin constructing a shadow government.

GorinichSerpant
2015-01-31, 05:54 PM
If I were Dracula I'd probably have difficulty grasping modern technology and I would probably have noticed that it's getting more and more complicated. So I'd turn at least one person who understands these kind of things and knows how to exploit them. Ideally someone who can stay up to date on modern tech for a as long as possible. There could be several people in this role, for various different fields. It would be good that the tech guy is aware of anything that could reveal the existence of the supernatural and made sure that never happens. If people find out werewolves actually exist or telepaths then not only is does paranoia ad chaos spread then people will be trying to discover what else is out there.

Find similar informants not only on technological progress, but on politics, medicine, science, religion, media and just everything. You need an understanding of what is going on or you'll make a stupid mistake becouse you weren't born in this century.

Also find someone in Hollywood and in the entertainment media in general. Get them to make lots of media about vampires. Find an author willing to write a terrible romance book about vampires. Make sure that it gets lots of publicity and popularity. Now with the various versions of vampires and that novel, nobody will take vampires seriously.:smallbiggrin:

the_david
2015-01-31, 06:21 PM
Uhm, did you actually read Bram Stoker's Dracula? Only attractive female virgins would satisfy him. Creating new vampires just to gain power? That is so not Dracula. Dracula would use fear and manipulation to rise to power.

San Francisco would be a completely different city too. Dracula would probably kill some of the mothers of the prominent people you're thinking of, so they might not have existed in the first place. If they did, they would have moved to better places.

dps
2015-01-31, 06:24 PM
Now, this doesn't work super-well in liberal democracies because the process needs to be repeated once or twice every decade. Various lower-level public servants and military staff who can command quite a lot of power but have no term limits, as well as leaders with indefinite re-elections work much better for this.


U.S. Supreme Court Justices.

Talakeal
2015-01-31, 06:38 PM
In the novel Dracula is very much an alpha male. He does his fighting personally and the only other vampires he creates are beautiful women.

If he was just taking the stereotypical BBEG role and needs a second in command for his empire I actually can't think of many historical people who fit the bill. There are lots of charismatic people, intelligent people, powerful people, very good / evil people, and dangerous people, but not too many who meet enough of those criteria at the same time. The closest I can think of would probably be Teddy Roosevelt.

(Un)Inspired
2015-01-31, 08:40 PM
I would turn Flickerdart.

Hehe Flickerdart, what do you think about that?


If I'm making a bid to take direct control of the mortal world? Leadership in intelligence agencies. Get the Directors of the FBI, CIA, and NSA under your thumb and you've got all you really need to begin constructing a shadow government.


If I were Dracula I'd probably have difficulty grasping modern technology and I would probably have noticed that it's getting more and more complicated. So I'd turn at least one person who understands these kind of things and knows how to exploit them. Ideally someone who can stay up to date on modern tech for a as long as possible. There could be several people in this role, for various different fields. It would be good that the tech guy is aware of anything that could reveal the existence of the supernatural and made sure that never happens. If people find out werewolves actually exist or telepaths then not only is does paranoia ad chaos spread then people will be trying to discover what else is out there.

Find similar informants not only on technological progress, but on politics, medicine, science, religion, media and just everything. You need an understanding of what is going on or you'll make a stupid mistake becouse you weren't born in this century.

Also find someone in Hollywood and in the entertainment media in general. Get them to make lots of media about vampires. Find an author willing to write a terrible romance book about vampires. Make sure that it gets lots of publicity and popularity. Now with the various versions of vampires and that novel, nobody will take vampires seriously.:smallbiggrin:

Very good suggestions but I was hoping for suggestions of actual individuals as opposed to tactics.


Uhm, did you actually read Bram Stoker's Dracula? Only attractive female virgins would satisfy him. Creating new vampires just to gain power? That is so not Dracula. Dracula would use fear and manipulation to rise to power.

San Francisco would be a completely different city too. Dracula would probably kill some of the mothers of the prominent people you're thinking of, so they might not have existed in the first place. If they did, they would have moved to better places.

I believe Dracula exists conceptually beyond simply how he was portrayed in B.S.'s Dracula. I'm comfortable with running Big D as willing to turn men to use vampire nobles under him.

I am indeed running SF as a vastly different city. Foggy San Francisco has taken on many of the traits of foggy Victorian London and 15th century Romania.


In the novel Dracula is very much an alpha male. He does his fighting personally and the only other vampires he creates are beautiful women.

If he was just taking the stereotypical BBEG role and needs a second in command for his empire I actually can't think of many historical people who fit the bill. There are lots of charismatic people, intelligent people, powerful people, very good / evil people, and dangerous people, but not too many who meet enough of those criteria at the same time. The closest I can think of would probably be Teddy Roosevelt.

I can get behind the Teddy Roosevelt idea.

Flickerdart
2015-01-31, 09:44 PM
I am indeed running SF as a vastly different city. Foggy San Francisco has taken on many of the traits of foggy Victorian London and 15th century Romania.

So, slightly less poop in the streets? :smallamused:


Hehe Flickerdart, what do you think about that?

A little bit flattered, a little bit brushing up on my crossbow aim.

Mastikator
2015-01-31, 09:51 PM
Aside from government institutional directors, I'd go for influential corporate CEOs. Specifically multinational ones. Not specifically to have them under my direct control all the time, just as potential strings to pull if needed.

I wouldn't turn anyone into a vampire, only charm them into my human puppets. As long as I'm the only vampire people won't believe vampires exist.

golentan
2015-02-01, 03:24 AM
Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffett, Amancio Ortega, Larry Ellison, the Walton Family, The Koch Brothers. Combined net worth as of last week, 511.1 billion dollars.

10 people, and you immediately have a working budget that exceeds the GDP of most nations, and numerous business and charitable empires with multinational reach arguably exceeding the influence threshold required to qualify as a superpower.

In 2012 there were only 10 nations in the world whose governmental budgets exceeded the personal wealth that you gain from the money of those 10 people.

If you can't make a serious bid for whatever it is you want with those 10 in your pocket, be it world domination, the extinction of werewolfs, or the bitchenest bachelor pad of all time, you're doing it very very wrong.

khadgar567
2015-02-01, 03:55 AM
personaly I agree wit goletan but aditionaly some playboy and/or victoria's secret girls so when needed I can have a quick way to make the pc one of my tralls or kill them outright via sexy assasins

LokiRagnarok
2015-02-01, 06:21 AM
People that a lot of people would listen to. In other words, things like Myspace celebrities, ideally some who have a following who would not question them (eg teenage girls). How about Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, or Madonna?

Gamgee
2015-02-01, 07:44 AM
Gandhi and Einstein who will promptly nuke the world.

dream
2015-02-01, 11:29 AM
I'm currently running a amp sign that features characters from campaigns I've run over the past five years for my players. It's sort of an epilogue chapter for all the different adventures they've had.

One of the precursor campaigns was a Mask of Red Death campaign in which Dracula took over control of San Francisco around the turn of the century.

The party was unable to thwart him and thus he was free to gain power of the past hundred years or so.

My question for you is:

If you were Big D, who from the twentieth century would you turn into a vampire lieutenant?

Who do you think would be pol to see as a vampire? What do you think Dracula would look for in a person?

After I'm got a good list of people I'm gonna actual build them and pit my party against them (Eventually).
Why would he keep a vampire pet when a human pet would fear him more? Being very old brings tremendous experience. I can't imagine Dracula being dumb enough to produce even one rival vampire. I do know what Dracula would look for in a person though:
warm blood:smallamused:

(Un)Inspired
2015-02-01, 12:11 PM
Why would he keep a vampire pet when a human pet would fear him more? Being very old brings tremendous experience. I can't imagine Dracula being dumb enough to produce even one rival vampire. I do know what Dracula would look for in a person though:
warm blood:smallamused:

He needs people who will last longer that a human lifetime. He's built SF into quite a respectable city state and he needs vessels to look over the large amount of land he controls.

I admit the situation he's set himself up in draws heavily on being narratively interesting rather than the most purely pragmatic choices he could make.

comicshorse
2015-02-01, 12:29 PM
J. Edgar. Hoover to run his intelligence gathering/blackmail network :smallsmile:

(Un)Inspired
2015-02-01, 03:39 PM
J. Edgar. Hoover to run his intelligence gathering/blackmail network :smallsmile:

Yes! That is an awesome call. I'm definitely gonna use him.

McStabbington
2015-02-01, 04:59 PM
Hrm. The only Dracula I'm terribly familiar with is Bram Stoker's Dracula, who has some severe, and indeed crippling weaknesses in the "turning" process. One, as noted he seems to have his feeding restricted to attractive young women with limited sexual experience. In the original novel, Lucy Westenra was very likely a virgin, as was Mina Harker prior to her marriage. It's a Victorian novel, so sex isn't actually discussed, but it's fairly clear from the context that Mina and Jonathan were having sex after their nuptials, and yet that did not seem to cause Dracula any difficulties in his feeding pattern. So, um, Adrianna Lima circa five years ago? Britney Spears circa fifteen years ago?

Two, everyone who gets turned automatically rises as a fairly mindless, always-chaotic evil vampire with feeding restrictions of their own. Lucy Westenra, upon rising, immediately started attacking the children of London. From the way it's written, absent the actions of the heroes, what you're looking at is less a subtle power grab behind the scenes from a cabal of vampires than a slower-moving form of zombie apocalypse, with death occurring from complete drainage of blood over several successive nights of feeding rather than a single bite, but the basic premise remaining the same. That has the potential to render your question fairly moot, as "who you turn" within a few years rapidly becomes "everyone" absent the actions of a determined group of heroes.

But you're saying that you're not basing this on the Dracula of Bram Stoker's novel. Okay, fair enough, but it still might help if you have some clear-cut rules for what turning does and how it works in your story. As it is, I will restrict myself to my knowledge of Dracula's psychology, partly from the Stoker novel but also from the more generic figure he's become in popular culture.

He's very smart, but relatively technologically unsophisticated. Nevertheless, he usually tries to learn the material himself rather than relying on an underling to do it for him. He spent the first part of the Stoker novel essentially picking Jonathan Harker's mind on subjects like property law, the geography of England and anything and everything which Harker knew that Dracula himself did not. And he picked it up with considerable alacrity, without ever turning Harker.

So I imagine that rather than turning people like J. Edgar Hoover, he'd show up and befriend one of his associates or underlings and attempt to get them to talk. The actual number of people he'd turn outright would be very small, largely because of a combination of paranoia and the fact that he can often manipulate someone into giving him what he wants without going to such extremes, but also because turning tends to destroy most of their sense of self-control, something that seems to take years to regain. Those he does turn, therefore, would be one of two classes of people. One is some underling to help him fight some other heroes or throw them off his scent. A disposable foil for some other operators working in the shadows, for instance. The other is someone who cannot be corrupted in any less-extreme fashion. So if you've got a character in City Hall, or in the national intelligence community, who is essentially like Harvey Dent, that would be the person that I as Dracula would turn.

Mr Beer
2015-02-01, 05:11 PM
Also find someone in Hollywood and in the entertainment media in general. Get them to make lots of media about vampires. Find an author willing to write a terrible romance book about vampires. Make sure that it gets lots of publicity and popularity. Now with the various versions of vampires and that novel, nobody will take vampires seriously.:smallbiggrin:

Holy crap, it's happening!

TheTeaMustFlow
2015-02-01, 10:05 PM
The cabinet secretary (head of the civil service in the UK) and his other-country equivalents. You don't want to have too many thralls, you don't want too visible thralls, and you don't want to have to replace your thralls too often. For that combination of power, invisibility and permanency, turning bureaucrats is the best bet.

Politicians, CEOs, and, to a lesser extent, officers, are people who get noticed, people who end up on the front page. Thus, the risk you run in turning them is very high - how long before someone notices that David Cameron has misplaced his reflection? Vamping Sir Humphrey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Appleby) is clearly the way to go.

Tarlek Flamehai
2015-02-02, 06:53 AM
Johnny Depp, because awesome!

GungHo
2015-02-03, 09:49 AM
People who are influential but who don't have to be seen in the day to pander their influence. So, no government officials, but maybe the trust fund managers and lobbyists who pay for their campaigns. You might not do the Koch brothers since they gotta go play golf and midnight golf is weird unless you're in Iceland, but you might want to do their accountants, corporate lawyers (not trial lawyers... corps hire contractors to actually go to court, corporate lawyers are advisors), treasurers, that kind of thing. Not the mafia dons, but consiglieres.

Storm_Of_Snow
2015-02-03, 12:19 PM
People that a lot of people would listen to. In other words, things like Myspace celebrities, ideally some who have a following who would not question them (eg teenage girls). How about Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, or Madonna?
You're on the right lines, but you actually want to go for the people that are in charge of them - media people: newspaper editors, the execs at the various broadcasters, record companies, movie studios, internet companies and so on. People who sit behind the scenes and subtley control the ways people think.

Have them swap around and change names every few years to keep up the masquerade - which is something famous people won't be able to do.

More seriously, what's your goal? Living forever in the shadows, or world domination and blood farming?

For the latter, aside from the media execs, you'd probably need a few others in different industries - some bankers, some corporate executives, civil servants (especially those that can deal with birth and death records, allowing your clan to stave off the attention brought by someone officially being 80, but only looking 30), doctors and so on.

To live quietly, with or without an un-life partner, you'd certainly need a police officer and/or a coroner, simply to help conceal your feeding habits.

But the more people you turn, the more likely someone will notice.

For a vampire in early 20th century San Francisco, remember you've got Alcatraz in the middle of the bay, and army and naval facilities spread around, especially if you can enthral people without turning them. :smallwink:

You've also got the effects of HIV on sections of the community in the 80s, and while a vampire may not be affected by it, they could still potentially be a transmission vector, plus various earthquakes that could affect their plans (the 1906 one in particular).