A different kind of beast.
Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2008 5:47 am
Several months ago I was probably struck upon the head, and so I decided to retool the werewolf and vampire myths into a single unified whole, complete with explanations for things such as Dhampyr(Vampirism is to HIV what...dhampyrism? is to AIDS, so to speak). I don't mean were-things that are halfbreeds, but a single template that fits both archetypes. Not knowing that this was probably a bad idea I started throwing together ideas, and so far I've got more or less 18 pages of material in Word, using White Wolf's new World of Darkness as a springboard for the mechanical aspects of this system.
Rather than put on a blindfold and throw darts to determine which aspects of the myths, stories and films to pick I decided to use them all. I'll probably get around to taking another look at shows like Teen Wolf and Vampire High.
However, I am looking at this all through a 'realistic' lens, at least for the sake of balancing issues, though I am doing so in a way that retains the whole "What you what to do, rather than how you want to do it." philosophy that Mage The Awakening has foisted off on me. Admittedly, quite a bit of it is pseudoscience and hand waving, with a hefty dose of phlebotinum thrown in, but it's the thought that counts.
Now, there's still all sorts of strange and usual powers attributed to both the monsters, such as inhuman senses, physical ability, or 'supernatural' talents such as being able to convince your jailer to unlock your cell so you can eat his face...It's just all done without men in robes waving their hands about and shouting nonsense. Well, you can still do that, but it's not going to make magic. I'm not infringing upon your freedom to express yourself.
Now, without posting the wall of text here because it still needs polishing, here's the general gist of this baby I'm making.
The entire template is modular, this means that you can choose what abilities(referred to as Mutations) you want, aside from a few core ones that are tied to the template itself. That's the standard slew: fast healing, selectively increased abilities, a complementary can of Kick a** by way of psychotic strength and cunning, and to top it all off a gnawing Hunger. Oh, and a gradual slide into insanity unless you have some impressive willpower.
The way I'm building it, anyone can pick any Mutation, eventually. I've got over 20 so far, from Echolocation to Mojo.
Since this is the easiest way, I'm using vampirism as the base of the virus, and lycanthropy as a mutated strain. After all, the basics of the two are almost identical: better senses, increased physical ability, and typically a desire to eat people or animals. It only gets worse, the Hunger, it's more than can satisfied by human food. First you start off eating everything in the fridge, then you start eating your pets and small children, until you cannibalize yourself or find some way to survive.
One of the immediately obvious things is that the lycanthrope(shifter) strain is not sensitive to UV radiation, at least no more so than people are normally. And this is a BIG difference, since a daylight walk in the park is going to have the average vampire sweating bullets.
Not much supernatural about it, no vengeful sun god or holy solar rays, they just rely on the virus to keep themselves from dying a horrible death that would make most lepers cringe. And since the virus is killed by UV radiation...
But this does not come without its price. The shifter strain is a mutated one, and one that keeps mutating, and once you have it you start to mutate. In trade for freedom from fearing sunlight, some of their Mutations are locked away, only able to be used in an inhuman form. Now, in keeping with the all-encompassing angle I'm taking with this project, 'inhuman form' is a very broad category. The best non-werewolf example I can think of for this is the Buffyverse vampires. They are much stronger and durable in their inhuman form, and they only have fangs in that form. Another vampire example would be Chiropterans from Blood and Blood+.
Now, there are some obvious inconsistencies, such as how I'm using a type of vampires as an example for the lycanthrope part of the template, and they also vulnerable to sunlight. It's a work in progress...
Now for the trickiest part of all, Transforming. I'm making this a piecemeal process, though the first time is the hardest. Basically stolen from Ginger Snaps is an unstoppable approaching first TF, such is the price of power. However, even in the beginning a shifter has rudimentary control over the process. If an ability is needed, such as faster-than-human regeneration to survive getting stabbed, or increased stamina to overcome a poison, the character can opt to speed the TF up to gain access to abilities that might not be available in human form. After their first TF, the character gains a slightly more conventional control over their ability: They can start, stop, speed up, or slow down their transformation, with varying degrees of success. I did make a chart for it, but it's on my laptop and unavailable at the moment.
Obviously, the degree of inhumanity and how long it takes to attain that state determine what the tradeoff is. If you're five minutes away from being able to regenerate being shot in the chest, then that's going to have a larger tradeoff than the guy who can shift in a couple of seconds. Likewise, the longer it takes, the further away from human it is. It's a bare second or two for Buffyverse vamps to sprout fangs, recolor their eyes and scrunch their forehead, and thus the tradeoff (power gained or lessened desire to eat everything in sight. Animals, small children, sandwiches.) is minimal. If your TF takes two minutes, it's only fair that you don't go insane from hunger in human form(maybe), or that you can dent steel and shrug off bullets while in your inhuman state.
So you can be high powered in human form, but have high requirements, or be low powered in human form and have low requirements, or anything in between. Though in most cases the decisions made upon infection stick, so you can't pogostick back and forth from vampire to werewolf in search of the ultimate munchkin balance. It's also hard to justify why your nightvision suddenly vanished and is only usable while you turn scaly and clawed.
I just wanted to post this here to get some feedback on the idea, as well as some suggestions for changes or improvements.
Rather than put on a blindfold and throw darts to determine which aspects of the myths, stories and films to pick I decided to use them all. I'll probably get around to taking another look at shows like Teen Wolf and Vampire High.
However, I am looking at this all through a 'realistic' lens, at least for the sake of balancing issues, though I am doing so in a way that retains the whole "What you what to do, rather than how you want to do it." philosophy that Mage The Awakening has foisted off on me. Admittedly, quite a bit of it is pseudoscience and hand waving, with a hefty dose of phlebotinum thrown in, but it's the thought that counts.
Now, there's still all sorts of strange and usual powers attributed to both the monsters, such as inhuman senses, physical ability, or 'supernatural' talents such as being able to convince your jailer to unlock your cell so you can eat his face...It's just all done without men in robes waving their hands about and shouting nonsense. Well, you can still do that, but it's not going to make magic. I'm not infringing upon your freedom to express yourself.
Now, without posting the wall of text here because it still needs polishing, here's the general gist of this baby I'm making.
The entire template is modular, this means that you can choose what abilities(referred to as Mutations) you want, aside from a few core ones that are tied to the template itself. That's the standard slew: fast healing, selectively increased abilities, a complementary can of Kick a** by way of psychotic strength and cunning, and to top it all off a gnawing Hunger. Oh, and a gradual slide into insanity unless you have some impressive willpower.
The way I'm building it, anyone can pick any Mutation, eventually. I've got over 20 so far, from Echolocation to Mojo.
Since this is the easiest way, I'm using vampirism as the base of the virus, and lycanthropy as a mutated strain. After all, the basics of the two are almost identical: better senses, increased physical ability, and typically a desire to eat people or animals. It only gets worse, the Hunger, it's more than can satisfied by human food. First you start off eating everything in the fridge, then you start eating your pets and small children, until you cannibalize yourself or find some way to survive.
One of the immediately obvious things is that the lycanthrope(shifter) strain is not sensitive to UV radiation, at least no more so than people are normally. And this is a BIG difference, since a daylight walk in the park is going to have the average vampire sweating bullets.
Not much supernatural about it, no vengeful sun god or holy solar rays, they just rely on the virus to keep themselves from dying a horrible death that would make most lepers cringe. And since the virus is killed by UV radiation...
But this does not come without its price. The shifter strain is a mutated one, and one that keeps mutating, and once you have it you start to mutate. In trade for freedom from fearing sunlight, some of their Mutations are locked away, only able to be used in an inhuman form. Now, in keeping with the all-encompassing angle I'm taking with this project, 'inhuman form' is a very broad category. The best non-werewolf example I can think of for this is the Buffyverse vampires. They are much stronger and durable in their inhuman form, and they only have fangs in that form. Another vampire example would be Chiropterans from Blood and Blood+.
Now, there are some obvious inconsistencies, such as how I'm using a type of vampires as an example for the lycanthrope part of the template, and they also vulnerable to sunlight. It's a work in progress...
Now for the trickiest part of all, Transforming. I'm making this a piecemeal process, though the first time is the hardest. Basically stolen from Ginger Snaps is an unstoppable approaching first TF, such is the price of power. However, even in the beginning a shifter has rudimentary control over the process. If an ability is needed, such as faster-than-human regeneration to survive getting stabbed, or increased stamina to overcome a poison, the character can opt to speed the TF up to gain access to abilities that might not be available in human form. After their first TF, the character gains a slightly more conventional control over their ability: They can start, stop, speed up, or slow down their transformation, with varying degrees of success. I did make a chart for it, but it's on my laptop and unavailable at the moment.
Obviously, the degree of inhumanity and how long it takes to attain that state determine what the tradeoff is. If you're five minutes away from being able to regenerate being shot in the chest, then that's going to have a larger tradeoff than the guy who can shift in a couple of seconds. Likewise, the longer it takes, the further away from human it is. It's a bare second or two for Buffyverse vamps to sprout fangs, recolor their eyes and scrunch their forehead, and thus the tradeoff (power gained or lessened desire to eat everything in sight. Animals, small children, sandwiches.) is minimal. If your TF takes two minutes, it's only fair that you don't go insane from hunger in human form(maybe), or that you can dent steel and shrug off bullets while in your inhuman state.
So you can be high powered in human form, but have high requirements, or be low powered in human form and have low requirements, or anything in between. Though in most cases the decisions made upon infection stick, so you can't pogostick back and forth from vampire to werewolf in search of the ultimate munchkin balance. It's also hard to justify why your nightvision suddenly vanished and is only usable while you turn scaly and clawed.
I just wanted to post this here to get some feedback on the idea, as well as some suggestions for changes or improvements.