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Grey Watcher
2018-11-17, 09:48 PM
So, the idea that vampires are incinerated by sunlight (with speed varying from work to work) is pretty firmly cemented in the pop-culture consciousness. Heck, one (of a great many) things people roll their eyes at Twilight over is the whole "sunlight just makes them sparkle" thing.

Except daywalking vampires have been a thing for a while. Dracula, Carmilla, and so many others could go out in the daytime, they just weren't as strong (often it shut down their supernatural powers, but it might also take the form of lethargy, weakness, etc.)

So, given that daywalking vampires have been a thing for a while, and that vampires outright dying from sunlight would appear to be a relatively recent addition to the lore, how badly do you think players would take it to see vampires out in the daytime? Probably varies quite a lot from table to table, but is it going too far in terms of defying the basic assumptions people are going in with?

MesiDoomstalker
2018-11-17, 10:04 PM
Given your example of the complaint lodged against Twilight, I think you've already answered your own question. At least part of the criticism toward Twilight is the 180 from Sunlight= Death to Sunlight=Sparkles but I doubt Sunlight =/= Death will go over much better, overall. Not unless you can establish this bit of lore before it is encountered. Then it will probably more palatable.

JNAProductions
2018-11-17, 10:05 PM
Probably be easier to just have them be something other than vampires.

Like Ghouls. Or Wights.

LuminousWarrior
2018-11-17, 11:02 PM
I've actually been planning something with a similar idea. For the typical vampire sunlight is deadly, but this is in part due to the power of the curse diluting itself over generations of vampires being spawned. Once you get to the source vampire, your Dracula or Strahd, you find a creature far stronger than the creatures you fought previously. One immune to the deadly sun that plagues thier inferior spawn.

That being said, I would still be sure to make them much weaker in the sunlight. Have them lose the special abilities granted by being a vampire and be forced to fight like a regular person and force them to make a save occasionally to avoid becoming further weakened by the sunlight. But a daywalking vampire should be something special. Something powerful.

MonkeySage
2018-11-17, 11:08 PM
The vampires in my campaigns aren't destroyed my sunlight. At worst, they're fatigued during the day and lose access to many of their supernatural abilities, but sunlight in particular has no effect on them at all.

VoxRationis
2018-11-17, 11:18 PM
If you're drastically changing a creature that's part of the general mythology or folklore, such that it no longer operates in a way the player would expect, it might be good sportsmanship to establish that such a non-equivalency between the general expectation and the specific instance exists. Providing snippets of in-universe lore or stories that make references (sometimes oblique, sometimes direct) to the changes would be a good step.

Darth Ultron
2018-11-17, 11:21 PM
I find most people....even more so most Gamers, like to keep things simple. So they want ''vampires killed by sunlight", as it's easy. To add in daywalkers and such is complcated, and most people don't like that.

From the D&D view, and other combat heavy games, players very much dislike when any vulnerability of a monster is changed. The same is true of ''fire trolls", for example.

AceOfFools
2018-11-18, 12:21 AM
It literally takes 8 words to establish "In this setting, vampires aren't destroyed by daylight."

It's not weirder or more unusual than having orcs with a strong navy, humans condemning monarchies in favor of democracy, or dwarves who have a strong tradition of monks.

Just drop it early, an adventure or two before they encounter vampires, drop it into the lore on the first knowledge check about vampires to remind them.

People are smart enough to learn new vampire rules with every new urban fantasy series, they're smart enough to remember this one detail for your games. I've literally tried it four times with three groups, and never got pushback.

Knaight
2018-11-18, 12:28 AM
Sunlight just meaning weakness is well established, so unless you're dealing with something with either an explicit or strongly implied setting (e.g. D&D) you're pretty much clear. Even if you do have them you're probably still fine, but if you have particular kinds of players you might want to drop a hint in advance.


It's not weirder or more unusual than having orcs with a strong navy, humans condemning monarchies in favor of democracy, or dwarves who have a strong tradition of monks.

There are pretty different differences in weirdness between these examples - most notably there's absolutely nothing weird about humans having democracies in a setting. There are more than a few settings where a monarchy would seem downright out of place.

Kardwill
2018-11-18, 11:49 AM
Like others said, just establish it as lore, for example a legend about a disguised vampire visiting a king's court by day, getting insulted, then coming back at night when his powers are strongest to have his revenge. Or have rumor about that vampire clan that seems to ingore the "rule" and just destroyed a keep by entering during the day with the other refugees. Or give several hints that what the monster they are chasing can operate by day.

I don't see reasons players would balk at established lore. Just don't drop it on them as a "gotcha" moment.

In my current campaign Dresden Files, when the players learned that Red Court vampires are not killed by sunlight, but REALLY don't like it anyway because they lose all their supernatural powers (including their ability to infiltrate human society : sunlight burns the flesh mask that hides their giant bat body), the vampire hunter player's reaction was "Oh? cool!"

Tvtyrant
2018-11-18, 12:26 PM
Depends on how you spin it. A knowledge check about Vampires could include "It is widely believed that vampires are slain by sunlight." And an NPC account could be seeing one standing in the distance during the day time staring at him. The other NPCs call bull**** on the story.

OldTrees1
2018-11-18, 12:40 PM
You can also go the age = power route. Sunlight weakens Vampires enough that the young at instantly dusted, the mature start dying, and the ancient one survives but vulnerable enough to attack.

The party would start fighting the young vampires. They can trap/dust them by attacking during the day.

The party would start encountering mature vampires. The same daytime tricks become less effective. The mature vampires keep fighting a bit when exposed to the sunlight. They can even escape by running from building to building (be sure to leave a dust pile as one of them but not all of them got exposed too long).

Over this time you have been introducing the vampires as stronger and strong. At the same time you have inserted the BBEG Ancient vampire into the crowd of NPCs around the PCs. The party eventually figures out the BBEG identity. They attack the BBEG and might take them out during the day. If the ancient vampire escapes then the party either needs to face them at night or during the day in their lair (letting the party pick the battleground or the time but not both).

Honest Tiefling
2018-11-18, 02:18 PM
Firstly, if you are really worried about this I'd make it clear in the first session that certain creatures won't be the same as they are in the monster book or in all mythologies. I think that's a fine disclaimer for a game. Be upfront about it and let them stew on it if you think you can make them second guess themselves.

Secondly, make it clear WHY vampires are different. What power them and lets them do things and why do they need blood? You don't need to inform the players immediately, but I think it would help if there was an actual reason for them to be different. Giving them some sort of narrative consistency that works with the setting as opposed to real world beliefs I think would make this far easier for a player to swallow. Give it a why as to why in this setting it makes sense.

Maybe if you worry about it, plunder other mythology. Admittedly I think that the daywalking corpse that look bangable might not be a common trope, but surely someone has one somewhere. Use that if you think they'll get up in arms about a daywalking corpse not reacting to seasoning.

Personally, I am in the camp that if the end result is awesome and is fine for the setting, it's good. I probably wouldn't mind the Twilight vampires so much if they weren't so nonsensical and make me wonder if you can mine a sparkly vampire for gemstones. Not like Dracula or Carmilla are really true to the ancient vampire beliefs anyway.

halfeye
2018-11-18, 02:45 PM
I've actually been planning something with a similar idea. For the typical vampire sunlight is deadly, but this is in part due to the power of the curse diluting itself over generations of vampires being spawned. Once you get to the source vampire, your Dracula or Strahd, you find a creature far stronger than the creatures you fought previously. One immune to the deadly sun that plagues thier inferior spawn.

In the Hammer series of horror films, there was at least one in which Dracula was destroyed by sunlight. Of course, in the next film he was back, but then again, he always was.

Nifft
2018-11-18, 04:06 PM
If you're going to spring it on the PCs as a "ha ha gotcha!" thing, then you're going to risk justifiably unhappy players. So don't do that.

If you manage expectations correctly -- i.e. by telling the players they're in a genre where daywalkers are normal, or by just flat-out telling them that your vampires are different -- then you're going to have a better shot at having happy players.

Boci
2018-11-18, 04:12 PM
I think the problem might stem from what vampires typically represent in a game. They lite-puzzle monsters. Not the true puzzle monster which absolutly requires X, but they have some very powerful abilities, balanced out by some very big weaknesses. This isn't just D&D, in oWoD vampires had some incredably powerful abilities, like the blood bond and their disciplines were very powerful too. Werewolves by constrast generally couldn't compete with vampires in any area other than physical combat, but they lacked major weakneses of which the vampires had several.

Pauly
2018-11-18, 09:31 PM
So, the idea that vampires are incinerated by sunlight (with speed varying from work to work) is pretty firmly cemented in the pop-culture consciousness. Heck, one (of a great many) things people roll their eyes at Twilight over is the whole "sunlight just makes them sparkle" thing.

Except daywalking vampires have been a thing for a while. Dracula, Carmilla, and so many others could go out in the daytime, they just weren't as strong (often it shut down their supernatural powers, but it might also take the form of lethargy, weakness, etc.)

So, given that daywalking vampires have been a thing for a while, and that vampires outright dying from sunlight would appear to be a relatively recent addition to the lore, how badly do you think players would take it to see vampires out in the daytime? Probably varies quite a lot from table to table, but is it going too far in terms of defying the basic assumptions people are going in with?

People will object to full power vampires walking around in daylight no matter how its justified. Vampires are a traditional puzzle monster, with specific weaknesses. If they don’t have weaknesses (daylight, garlic, rosewood, silver are traditional examples) then they are no longer vampires.

However this does not preclude vampires being active in the daylight. There are several paths you can use.
Path 1 (traditional): vampires lose their powers in daylight
Path 2 (non traditional): vampires are using technology, to resist the effect of the sun. This will need to be visible to the player in some way, not a “oh they have 100+ spf sunscreen” handwave. They are covered head to toe in special clothing, they drive cars with mirrored windows etc. They are still vulnerable to the sun, but they have developed work arounds. The British TV series “ultraviolet” has some excellent examples.
Path 3 (non traditional): they lose some of their supernatural powers in order to eliminate their weakness to sunlight. This works well in an environment where there are several vampire clans.
Path 4 (traditional): potential vampires i.e. people in the process of being turned can operate in sunlight with some vampiric abilities, but full vampires retain their weaknesses. Vampires of course will keep some servants on in a perpetual semi-vampire state because they are useful as servants but not needed as full vampires. In most modern fiction it is the thralls (controlled humans) who are active in daylight while the vampires sleep.

Mr Beer
2018-11-18, 11:03 PM
Vampires have a broad range of powers and vulnerabilities in fiction, there's no reason you can't have vampires around in the day time.

Some vampires drop into a coma at sunrise or burst into flames in direct sunlight; others merely have diminished powers...I guess I like vampires to be creatures of the night so I'd probably prefer them to be weaker in day time but it's your game.

As said above, you probably don't want to present it as a gotcha to your players; I also don't think you need to tell them all about it either, unless vampires are common/well understood creatures. Some aura of mystery is appropriate if they are intended to be a serious threat, or a boss monster.

Honest Tiefling
2018-11-18, 11:54 PM
People will object to full power vampires walking around in daylight no matter how its justified. Vampires are a traditional puzzle monster, with specific weaknesses. If they don’t have weaknesses (daylight, garlic, rosewood, silver are traditional examples) then they are no longer vampires.

Vampires have a broad range of powers and vulnerabilities in fiction, there's no reason you can't have vampires around in the day time.

Considering I have never even heard of the rosewood or silver thing (well, outside of making holy water for third edition), I'm going to agree with Mr. Beer. Heck, I don't think I have met many players that are going to be hung up on the garlic thing. It's been explained to me WHY it made sense, but to a modern audience, it's as iconic as throwing shoes at them.

Hell, before this moment I wasn't aware that rosewood was even a thing. I guess Vampires hate certain fashions?

Kish
2018-11-18, 11:57 PM
So, the idea that vampires are incinerated by sunlight (with speed varying from work to work) is pretty firmly cemented in the pop-culture consciousness. Heck, one (of a great many) things people roll their eyes at Twilight over is the whole "sunlight just makes them sparkle" thing.

Except daywalking vampires have been a thing for a while. Dracula, Carmilla, and so many others could go out in the daytime, they just weren't as strong (often it shut down their supernatural powers, but it might also take the form of lethargy, weakness, etc.)
Also, in AD&D 2ed Ravenloft, Van Richten's Guide to Vampires, vampires gained the ability to tolerate increasing amounts of sun with age. Once a vampire reached 1000 years old, sunlight was nothing worse than uncomfortable for them, though it specified they'd still prefer to avoid it.

Pauly
2018-11-19, 12:07 AM
Considering I have never even heard of the rosewood or silver thing (well, outside of making holy water for third edition), I'm going to agree with Mr. Beer. Heck, I don't think I have met many players that are going to be hung up on the garlic thing. It's been explained to me WHY it made sense, but to a modern audience, it's as iconic as throwing shoes at them.

Hell, before this moment I wasn't aware that rosewood was even a thing. I guess Vampires hate certain fashions?

Old school vampires were traditionally ‘unholy’ hence the aversion to crosses.

Silver in christian iconography is representative of pureness, and hence opposite to the nature of vampires. Of course now it is more associated with killing werewolves. As an aside it is the origin of vampires not showing a reflection because ye olde days mirrors were silver backed and the pure metal would not reflect the unholy image. In the older myths silver is a protection against vampires, and the crucifixes that worked against vampires were made of silver. Just holding up to pieces of wood in the shape of a cross wasn’t enough, especially for stronger vampires.

In Bram stomer’s Dracula it is specifically rosewood stakes used to kill vampires. Rosewood traditionally symbolizes kindness and a good heart, again opposite qualities to vampires. In the original myths just sticking a piece of random wood into a vampire’s heart did nothing, excpet maybe make the vampire angry. It required a wood that was opposite to the nature of a vampire.

Mordaedil
2018-11-19, 02:11 AM
In my setting, vampires are damaged by sunlight same as any other damage source, and being reduced to 0 or fewer hit points reverts them to gaseous forms, leaving them to fly off back to their coffins or wait until midnight to regenerate.

This way removes a cheap way of destroying them and still leaves them inconvenienced by the sun. Of course, it's also not a big deal to make feats that reduced the damage of the sun or make them outright immune. It just can't be entirely free.

Knaight
2018-11-19, 02:37 AM
Considering I have never even heard of the rosewood or silver thing (well, outside of making holy water for third edition), I'm going to agree with Mr. Beer. Heck, I don't think I have met many players that are going to be hung up on the garlic thing. It's been explained to me WHY it made sense, but to a modern audience, it's as iconic as throwing shoes at them.
Silver is a pretty common one, which you see a lot especially in vampire stories set in more modern eras - silver bullets especially are a standard vampire fighting weapon, right after stakes, especially if you want to save the really fancy equipment for later (e.g. bullets that actively radiate UV light, Underworld Evolution style).


Silver in christian iconography is representative of pureness, and hence opposite to the nature of vampires. Of course now it is more associated with killing werewolves.
Silver is representative of pureness pretty broadly - and it's worth noting that it's in the very notably overlapping set of materials representative of pureness good for killing monsters in legend and actual antibacterials/antiseptics. A similar point applies to garlic.

Berenger
2018-11-19, 06:32 AM
I find most people....even more so most Gamers, like to keep things simple. So they want ''vampires killed by sunlight", as it's easy. To add in daywalkers and such is complcated, and most people don't like that.

Im not really convinced. The setting of the Vampire rpg is about as convoluted and complicated as possible, the characters are the vampires and the players would still cry bloody murder if offered sunlight resistance.

gkathellar
2018-11-19, 06:42 AM
Silver is representative of pureness pretty broadly - and it's worth noting that it's in the very notably overlapping set of materials representative of pureness good for killing monsters in legend and actual antibacterials/antiseptics. A similar point applies to garlic.

There's also a cultural contributor: silver would be used to make religious objects when gold was too expensive, which led people to associate silver with holiness because a lot of religious objects were made of silver.

Mordaedil
2018-11-19, 07:15 AM
Im not really convinced. The setting of the Vampire rpg is about as convoluted and complicated as possible, the characters are the vampires and the players would still cry bloody murder if offered sunlight resistance.

It's also really questionable why sunlight vulnerability makes things "simple" when it actually introduces so many caveats for middlegrounds between if something kills a vampire and if it doesn't. It adds complexity, not simplicity. It's game states that the DM has to keep in mind and suddenly limits the hours at which they can operate.

Pauly
2018-11-19, 07:21 AM
The crux of the issue is that the weaknesses vampires, and other mythological puzzle monsters, had was that the thing they were weak against was their symbolic opposite or things they were otherwise linked to

Silver works against the unholy or impure.
Religous artefacts (crucifixes, holy water, communion wafers) work against the unholy.
Antiseptics (garlic, running water) worked against death/undead.
Rosewood worked against the heartless.
Wolfsbane aka monkshood (a general poison which can be deadly to humans) worked against werewolves. This seems to be a linguistic link since the name originated from Greek and as far as I’m aware it predates werewolf myths.
Laurel/Bay was a barrier to unseen/insidious threats (because the smell of bay leaves deters insects which lead to the practice of planting bay trees near the kitchen doors in Europe.)

There is a huge amount of historical lore from Europe about which plants protected against which threats, both real and mythical.

Now if you change the setting from traditional Europe then it is fair to the players to change the weaknesses in line with the culture. But if you play a well known puzzle monster without their weaknesses (even non traditional weaknesses) then the players will feel cheated.

Honest Tiefling
2018-11-19, 12:01 PM
Now if you change the setting from traditional Europe then it is fair to the players to change the weaknesses in line with the culture. But if you play a well known puzzle monster without their weaknesses (even non traditional weaknesses) then the players will feel cheated.

Which is why I think vampires should be tooled for the setting. Garlic is going to be associated more heavily with garlic bread (and possibly Italian food) than purity. Rosewood isn't a singular species, so that might cause some confusion. I don't think silver made objects would be pure silver, so that would be confusing to a modern audience as to why you are fighting with an impure symbol of purity.

So while it might have made sense to a medieval peasant, modern audiences aren't heavily steeped in the same lore, so it's going to be confusing.

If you want daywalking vampires, I'd address the issue that way. What does the sun represent in magic? Fire? War? Death? Law? Maybe vampires were made in such a way that the sun just isn't their opposite. And then introduce some thingys that might stop a new vampire, such as a sacred plant that a priest would really like the party to recover in exchange for gold. If hints are dropped before hand that things are different and that some other things are important, I think that's fine.

Besides why would you even want a vampire that doesn't work with the mythology of the setting!?

Slipperychicken
2018-11-19, 12:15 PM
how badly do you think players would take it to see vampires out in the daytime?

I'd take it badly if you just spring it on us without any kind of exposition about it. If you give us a heads up 'hey guys vampires in this game don't care about sunlight', then it's less bad because you established it.

In any case you'd ruffle fewer feathers by having the exact same monster, but calling them any number of other names; ghoul, ghast, wight, immortal, blood-sucker, wendigo, man-eater, or something along those lines. There are so many better options that there isn't any need for you to continue mangling the definition of 'vampire'. You have the option to completely sidestep this issue, so that's what I recommend.

Pauly
2018-11-19, 08:22 PM
Which is why I think vampires should be tooled for the setting. Garlic is going to be associated more heavily with garlic bread (and possibly Italian food) than purity. Rosewood isn't a singular species, so that might cause some confusion. I don't think silver made objects would be pure silver, so that would be confusing to a modern audience as to why you are fighting with an impure symbol of purity.

So while it might have made sense to a medieval peasant, modern audiences aren't heavily steeped in the same lore, so it's going to be confusing.

If you want daywalking vampires, I'd address the issue that way. What does the sun represent in magic? Fire? War? Death? Law? Maybe vampires were made in such a way that the sun just isn't their opposite. And then introduce some thingys that might stop a new vampire, such as a sacred plant that a priest would really like the party to recover in exchange for gold. If hints are dropped before hand that things are different and that some other things are important, I think that's fine.

Besides why would you even want a vampire that doesn't work with the mythology of the setting!?

I’m not sure about Grey Watcher’s setting, but there have been 2 fairly recent examples that deal with traditional puzzle monsters with plausible PSB that explains why traditional cures affect the monster.
“trollhunter” (2010 Norwegian mockumentary) has an explanation for why ultraviolet light turns trolls into stone and that trolls are discomforted by electrical fields which is why there is less contact with humans now than in the past.
“Ultraviolet” (1998 British mini-series) has scientists isolating active ingredients in garlic, using video sights on guns to (vampires don’t reflect therefore they don’t show on cameras) confirm if a target is human or vampire, using carbon bullets instead of wooden stakes, religous artefacts’ usefulness is mainly psychological depending on the vampire’s beliefs and the user’s beliefs.

Glorthindel
2018-11-20, 06:16 AM
Depends on how you play it; whether they are stock monsters populating a themed-dungeon, or whether as the big bad encounter at the end of a more involved mystery.

If the players are likely to run into them with little foreshadowing or opportunity to research their foe beyond "here be vampires", then switching things under them might seem rough. However, if the encounter will come at the end of a long and involved mystery, where the opportunity exists to learn some of the history of the monster they are facing, then I see no problem in switching out some of the 'traditional' vampire traits - and in fact, I would highly reccommend it in order to create a memorable villain.

To my mind, Vampires (and other horror staples like Ghosts and Liches) are very well suited to creating a custom creature based off the monsters life, death, and undeath. If their curse has come about as a function of their crimes in life, the circumstances surrounding the crime could create more flavourful replacements for traditional traits and weaknesses. Maybe this Vampire transforms into a bird instead of a bat, or is weakened by the scent of a rose instead of garlic, can freely cross running water and step on holy ground, but cannot cross a cart track, or enter a building associated with the law. As long as the creatures history can point an adventurer who is researching his mark towards these variations (and the style of campaign encourages this more measured investigative adventure, rather than charge in headlong), then all is good.

DeTess
2018-11-20, 06:47 AM
As long as you give the players a chance to discover the differences before the vampire is tearing them apart, and give them a reason to assume their normal assumptions are incorrect, it should be fine. This could be done away from the table ('hey guys, my vampires are different. Don't assume you have any useful meta-knowledge') or in-game, with a 'random' encounter wiht a vampire hunter at some point in the campaign that just casually mentions the existence of day-walking vampires.

Another thing you could look at for inspiration is the Witcher series. In this game and book series there's a variety of vampire types, many of which are hurt by light, but the most dangerous generally aren't too bothered by sunlight.

Mordar
2018-11-20, 04:10 PM
Given your example of the complaint lodged against Twilight, I think you've already answered your own question. At least part of the criticism toward Twilight is the 180 from Sunlight= Death to Sunlight=Sparkles but I doubt Sunlight =/= Death will go over much better, overall. Not unless you can establish this bit of lore before it is encountered. Then it will probably more palatable.

Given how many people (particularly the gamer/comicbook fan cross over portion of the Venn diagram) seemed to like Blade, maybe it wasn't the sparkly-walking-in-daytime parts of Twilight that large groups of people disliked, and perhaps that was just used as shorthand for hating Twilight.


Depends on how you spin it. A knowledge check about Vampires could include "It is widely believed that vampires are slain by sunlight." And an NPC account could be seeing one standing in the distance during the day time staring at him. The other NPCs call bull**** on the story.

I agree strongly here...give them lots of opportunities to learn about your vampyre and why it is different from the Vampire they were expecting. But don't lay it on too thick, because the surprise elements could still be fun discoveries.

I for one would love a story where the guy we met in scene two at the King's picnic turns out to be a vampire in the climactic scene in his castle. Particularly if we knew ahead of time...as Honest Tiefling tells us...


Firstly, if you are really worried about this I'd make it clear in the first session that certain creatures won't be the same as they are in the monster book or in all mythologies. I think that's a fine disclaimer for a game. Be upfront about it and let them stew on it if you think you can make them second guess themselves.

Secondly, make it clear WHY vampires are different. What power them and lets them do things and why do they need blood? You don't need to inform the players immediately, but I think it would help if there was an actual reason for them to be different. Giving them some sort of narrative consistency that works with the setting as opposed to real world beliefs I think would make this far easier for a player to swallow. Give it a why as to why in this setting it makes sense.

I'm not sure it is necessary to do the Ecology of the Vampire part...unless you want them to be a significant part of the campaign as a whole, and maybe have different "breeds". If that's the case, the first daywalker would be a nice introduction to that and should, if handled well, pay off any potential player angst about the subverted expectations.

As long as you give the players a chance to discover the differences before the vampire is tearing them apart, and give them a reason to assume their normal assumptions are incorrect, it should be fine. This could be done away from the table ('hey guys, my vampires are different. Don't assume you have any useful meta-knowledge') or in-game, with a 'random' encounter wiht a vampire hunter at some point in the campaign that just casually mentions the existence of day-walking vampires.

Another thing you could look at for inspiration is the Witcher series. In this game and book series there's a variety of vampire types, many of which are hurt by light, but the most dangerous generally aren't too bothered by sunlight.


If you're going to spring it on the PCs as a "ha ha gotcha!" thing, then you're going to risk justifiably unhappy players. So don't do that.

If you manage expectations correctly -- i.e. by telling the players they're in a genre where daywalkers are normal, or by just flat-out telling them that your vampires are different -- then you're going to have a better shot at having happy players.

I'm not sure about part 2 here...that undoes the surprise for fear of surprise making people unhappy. Being too specific about monster changes can lead to problems, I think. The more general "don't assume all monsters are vanilla Monster Manual critters" should suffice. However, it does stand that if the players know they are in a vampire-rich environment and make plans to defend themselves based on trope expectations, I think it is incumbent upon the DM to make it clear that not all those player expectations are necessarily valid in the characters' world. See the reference to knowledge checks above.


I'd take it badly if you just spring it on us without any kind of exposition about it. If you give us a heads up 'hey guys vampires in this game don't care about sunlight', then it's less bad because you established it.

In any case you'd ruffle fewer feathers by having the exact same monster, but calling them any number of other names; ghoul, ghast, wight, immortal, blood-sucker, wendigo, man-eater, or something along those lines. There are so many better options that there isn't any need for you to continue mangling the definition of 'vampire'. You have the option to completely sidestep this issue, so that's what I recommend.

If it walks, talks, swims, eats and flies like a duck but happens to have little hooks on its feet is it no longer a duck? If the creature is 95% vampire (and really, probably even more than 95%) but has a wrinkle, I think it is still best for it to be thought of as a vampire. Most of the name suggestions given above also have very specific "known" rulesets or expansive mythologies as well.

Still, I can understand expectations, particularly in certain groups/types of games, that bog-standard is the rule. What would be worse - having characters prepare for a vampire but discover daylight doesn't impact the creature or having characters discover that the Gnasher that is terrorizing the barony is just a reskin of a vampire that that one spell doesn't work on any more and that you can't escape at 6:01am because it won't go outside?

tl;dr: Don't spoil the surprise about the BBEG being a daywalking vampire in session one by saying "My vampires are different!". Instead, alert the players, particularly experienced ones, that the critters in this campaign don't automatically go "by the book", so be prepared for differences...and then over the course of the game let them have opportunities to learn about those important differences.

And I totally would enjoy playing in a game where I met the eventual bad guy at the King's picnic and then discounted him because "Of course vampires can't go to picnics!".

- M

Mordaedil
2018-11-21, 02:50 AM
Given how many people (particularly the gamer/comicbook fan cross over portion of the Venn diagram) seemed to like Blade, maybe it wasn't the sparkly-walking-in-daytime parts of Twilight that large groups of people disliked, and perhaps that was just used as shorthand for hating Twilight.

It's not even the not-bloodsucking part that people don't like, cause I'm fairly sure Count Duckula was somewhat liked even by vampire fans.

I think what people disliked about Stephanie Meyers vampire novels that were pseudo-erotica for teenage girls is that it completely defanged the vamprie and were nearly unrecognizable as vampiric. The mystery and dangerous allure was gone, the monster aspect was gone, the powers and weaknesses were not there and the forever immortal thing just made the relationship kind of creepy instead of romantic. I don't think Stephanie Meyers is a bad writer, largely because I haven't actualy read the subject matter and thus I am unable to actually comment on it, but seeing how she acts and talks in interviews and online on Twitter, I certainly don't think she's a bad person or a poor writer. Her goal was to tame vampires for a modern young adult audience and I think she largely succeeded.

Personally, I think vampire fans were just disappointed that she could have written a perfectly normal vampire story and still be successful with a modern audience, a lot of these people were thirsting for a new vampire story and it just didn't meet that set of requirements. Hating on Twilight is akin to hating on Diet Coke. Yes, sure you can critique it for how bad it is, but you could also simply chose to not intake any of it. Ultimately there is no point in shaming people for their bewrage intake nor for what manner of erotica they read.

I appreciate an authors ability to make kids read in this day and age.

Xuc Xac
2018-11-21, 11:01 AM
In Bram stomer’s Dracula it is specifically rosewood stakes used to kill vampires. Rosewood traditionally symbolizes kindness and a good heart, again opposite qualities to vampires. In the original myths just sticking a piece of random wood into a vampire’s heart did nothing, excpet maybe make the vampire angry. It required a wood that was opposite to the nature of a vampire.

In the original myths, it didn't even require wood. Most of the time, the stake was just a big iron rod. The purpose of the stake wasn't to pierce the heart. It was to nail the vampire's body to the ground so they couldn't get out of their grave if they woke up again. If you just stick it in their heart, they can stand up and keep going. You have to stick it through them and into the ground to pin them down like a butterfly in an insect collection. Archaeologists have uncovered a lot of graves like this where the chests have an iron rod driven through them into the ground under the body (and some that have big iron spikes driven through the foreheads too).

"Wooden stakes" aren't made of wood because wood hurts vampires. They're made of wood because they're stakes and that's what most stakes are made of.

Honest Tiefling
2018-11-21, 12:14 PM
Okay, I've changed my mind. Giving a blanket statement that monsters are different should be enough. But I'd still advise having a detailed idea in your head of what a vampire is and what their weaknesses are, just in case something unpredictable happens and you need to improvise.

I do find it amusing that there are apparently Vampire fans who don't like deviation from their own deviation of the vampire myths. That's a bit like saying the Star Wars original triology aren't Star Warsy enough because they don't look like the prequels.

Knaight
2018-11-21, 02:15 PM
Okay, I've changed my mind. Giving a blanket statement that monsters are different should be enough. But I'd still advise having a detailed idea in your head of what a vampire is and what their weaknesses are, just in case something unpredictable happens and you need to improvise.

Even this might be excessive - we're not in one of the D&D subforums here, which means that the assumption that there is a default monster which is being deviated from is already questionable. There's not really anything to be different from, apart from a diffuse set of contradictory fictional depictions.

Honest Tiefling
2018-11-21, 02:48 PM
I think some games, such as well, Vampire the Whatever Edition do have established monsters. And indicating that you are moving away from the lore in the mythology is always good, else you get players confused as to why trolls are green or something.