PDA

View Full Version : This might sound odd, but Vampire Diaries has some of the best Tabletop plots EVER



Man_Over_Game
2020-11-29, 11:02 AM
So I'm watching this Vampire Diaries show, since I love my wife and she is very spoiled, and where I originally assumed it was some dramatic, teenie-bopper, vampire gush-fest ala Twilight, I was actually surprised by the incredibly intelligent plotlines and diverse characters.

Consider this, an actual mini-arc that isn't extremely relevant in the story:

First, two things you must know:

The 5 Vampire Hunter leaders (from hundreds of years ago) bless themselves with a failsafe that, if they happened to die from a Vampire, would cause the guilty vampire to be driven insane by the ghost of that hunter, to the point of eventually killing themselves.
-
Additionally, vampires have the ability to "compel" humans to do...whatever it is that the vampire wants (it can even do things like erase memories or cause you to ignore pain).



Combining the two, one super cunning vampire was being hunted by one of these leader slayers and their daughter, and was caught in a bad catch-22, where they couldn't really get rid of their problem. So he compelled the daughter to kill her own father.

The daughter, seeking revenge, sought out assistance from these 8 powerful sages who's village were assaulted by vampires for their magical blood. The sages each sacrificed themselves as part of a ritual, charging a magical sword and linking it to the girl. Each time the girl dies, she instead loses one of her 8 extra lives, and becomes a little bit stronger.

Additionally, the sword is pretty damn powerful, with things like:

If you are cut by the sword, you have are permanently Marked by it.
The girl can always tell where you are if you are Marked.
If she is near you, you will start to bleed from your Mark, revealing your location if you somehow hid yourself through magic.
If she dies after you've been Marked, her spirit will automatically be sacrificed for a spell that breaks open your Mark until you permanently bleed to death.
The sword contains a stone that doesn't kill its victims, but instead sends them into a pocket dimension into the stone. Since it is technically possible to raise people from the dead (rarely, but possible), creating a prison seemed a better solution.


This was all revealed when an old and feared vampire hunter was dying on her deathbed, she acted like she had dementia, asking about snickerdoodles. Her assailants, not sure if this was the correct target, disputed whether or not they should kill the old woman, and she used their dispute to shoot one while they were alone with a crossbow and fled. She later got caught, was burned alive, and so the life of the old woman was lost for the next life in the cycle.

Other plots include:

Witches in a coven were being killed by one of their own, a sociopath who was upset at not being the leader of the coven through the coven's subterfuge. They warped him to a timeless pocket dimension as a prison sentence. Years later, two protagonists accidentally warp themselves into the same pocket dimension through chaotic magic shenanigans. After being tortured by the prisoner, they all eventually escape, until he's able to get all of his powers and kill the coven. Before the coven dies, they manage to save the unborn children of the coven by magically transplanting them into a different woman.
.
A different clan of vampires moves into the town the plot usually takes place in. They want peace, to use people by Compelling them to donate blood regularly at blood banks in exchange for food, and to treat them like cattle. This creates a rift between the main protagonists, as some see this as a better alternative, and others see it as slavery.
.
That super-vampire, the one that makes a daughter kill her own father, gets his own. He surrounded himself with allies for protection, as he knew there was a target on his back. So the protagonists employed a witch to cast a powerful illusion spell. They snuck in, under an Invisibility spell, and then duplicated the spell onto the vampire. Then, they stabbed him right in the middle of his living room, in front of all of his friends who couldn't see or hear him, and left.



If my DM pulled off half the stuff in Vampire Diaries, that'd be a damn good DM. I'm not saying you need to watch it, but looking up the summaries of just some of the smaller plots (pretty much anything past the first half of the first season) will give off some great ideas for aspiring DMs.

Rule-Of-Three
2020-11-29, 01:33 PM
Ok, I'm onboard. Not everything in it clicked, but I loved the sword backstory and theme. However, I probably would use that in a different setting and engine than D&D. Mechanically it is rare to even kill players once in most campaigns (as very few people like the challenge of GG hard mode anymore), and eight extra goes, each more powerful than the last, takes out a lot of dramatic tension.

As an aside, I think it would work out fairly well in 3.5 under the Legacy Weapon system, where you can stagger the bennies and put a feat tax on it.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-11-30, 02:49 AM
As an aside, I think it would work out fairly well in 3.5 under the Legacy Weapon system, where you can stagger the bennies and put a feat tax on it.
Hell, you can put a "dying" tax on it (in lieu of the standard penalties). Losing a level stings less if you get some new advancement out of your weapon (also if it's planned and everyone is losing a level with you).

@OP: It does sound like good tabletop plots. Pretty metal, if you'll pardon the expression.

Chijinda
2020-11-30, 07:59 AM
Honestly, Vampire Diaries had some really great concepts-- I agree (and in fact had my Hunter in World of Darkness adopt several tactics used by the Hunters in VD, including a customized pistol designed to fire miniature wooden stakes). I never considered how frigging metal some of the actual plotlines themselves and the actual setting is until you laid it out like this though, but you're absolutely right.

Its main drawback being that the actual main cast are honestly terrible, incompetent idiots with a talent for having the worst possible timing imaginable.

Man_Over_Game
2020-11-30, 10:39 AM
@OP: It does sound like good tabletop plots. Pretty metal, if you'll pardon the expression.

One of the cooler subplots involve the unique Werewolf/Vampire hybrid badguy, who isn't able to produce more of his kind without them killing themselves.

He manipulates the protagonists into assisting him completing a ritual that would break this curse, but there's a caveat: The ritual requires him to kill someone with a specific kind of supernatural blood.

That part of the recipe was a lie. The ritual for cleansing the curse was made by the witches who created it, and the special blood is actually the means of stopping future hybrids from dying. Killing the ingredient ends up permanently destroying the supply of blood the hybrid would need for his army.

So when the protagonists found a way to fake the "ingredient's" death mid-ritual, it ended up backfiring when the hybrid found out the truth and was able to imprison the necessary person and use them as a refilling blood bag.

Which then led to an army of obedient, vampire/werewolf hybrids that only die from decapitation. After a long period of obeying his orders, they eventually create a plot to turn on him. However, one of their own turns double-agent, which causes the hybrid servants to walk into a trap, where he then kills them all.

Metal indeed.



Its main drawback being that the actual main cast are honestly terrible, incompetent idiots with a talent for having the worst possible timing imaginable.

Which is quite apt for the standard tabletop party.

One thing I do like about the people in this show is how...human they all feel.

Take the classic DnD spell Zone of Truth. It has multiple loopholes that human players regularly take advantage of. Well, magic in the VD universe works in a lot of similar ways, and people will abuse similar loopholes. For example, being commanded through magic to kill someone may give enough wiggle room to allow you to strangle them, and then immediately attempt CPR. As a result, everyone who has a bit of experience makes sure to be specific with the means of death, such as "Kill them....with this dagger".

They also use powers in a very human way. One vampire compels his boss into giving him a raise. A wizard comments on how hard life felt without magic, as he proceeds to open doors and lights candles with it. It's one of the few examples I've seen on television where people live with the supernatural, instead of it just being a plot point for the audience.