How do you make vampires the good guys?

best boy

Easy, God is trying to kill the world, again, and vampires who rejected him aren't having his shit.

>vampires are symbiotic with humans; cannot survive very long without a host
>without a vampire's help, humans can't use magic
>depending on what clan the vampire is born from, the human will be able to use different types of magic
>magic is the only way to destroy the awakened evil, manifested from negative energy
>the evil seeks the destruction of vampires and the enslavement of humans
>will stoop so low as to even attempt to create a social rift between vampires and humans

Tell the story from their perspective.

Underrated

...

Vigilantism. Have them feed on those who turned a sword against their fellow human for profit- thieves, ruffians and brutes-, either at the vampire fangs or at the executioner's block their life is forfeit regardless. Once they run out of criminals, have them stalk hobos, prostitutes and runaways. Learn everything about their targets, maybe even show them the night of their lives, drug their food and drain them in their blissful sleep. Once that source is depleted, move on to a new community, let evil recuperate so the vampire can come back in a few decades and drink this decade's harvest.

Some god or wizard got tired of worrying about them, so they got cursed to only being able to feed from the blood of evil-aligned people. As in, like when they try to get into someone's house uninvited in some settings, they are physically prevented as with a force field from entering, they literally can not sink their fangs into good or even neutral aligned bodies, and their blood won't sustain a vampire if aquired indirectly.

Now, vampires make great paladins for gods that don't hate undead. They're also more acceptable to peasants because they won't get you if you're good, and are only killing the murderers/rapists/thieves/lawyers/etc. that they get fucked over by anyway. Might earn their place with humans.

Then some other EVIL god or wizard finds one willing clan of them, and reverses the curse, so they may only drink the good. Depending on how long they've been evil's natural predators, it might be a while before anyone noticed. The plebs might think the good victims were evil because thats how vamp teeth work now, and detect evil won't work on corpses. The vampires who enjoy their new status might see danger to their new peace and comfort if this is brought to light, some still remembering the Hunts. Some want to silence all who drink good blood or know of it, some want to reverse out of spite, some want it dispelled entirely.

There is a lot that can be done with this.

thats how you get blood line wars mang. Good stuff.

I had a setting like this.

>"Draculas" are earth's natural response to an evil alien slime parasite that occasionally land on the planet in meteorites.

>Draculas can go around during the day, but are weak to wooden stakes and humans natural belief focused in objects. Have to sleep in mother earth and are completetly helpless when they do so.

>slime vampires are allergic to UV and silver, part of a hivemind.

My. Fucking. Nigger.

Pic related

>party are recently turned vampires who 'never asked for this'. Form a resistance to the vampire establishment
>vampire scientists/ sympathetic human scientists create a serum that allows vampires to beat the thirst
>without it withdrawal kicks in hard and its expensive/hard to make. Bloodbanks as a last resort.
>hunt down asshole vampires, take their shit. Try to uncover vampire lore/secrets that could lead to a cure/better serum
>taking down powerful vampires makes them more powerful perhaps?
>convince other vampires who are redeemable to take serum
>hang out in a warehouse and come up with new hilerious ways to fuck up vampires

To add on to my idea:

Some kingdoms might even offer prisoners meant for execution to vampires in general or a specific clan to entice them to kill their enemies or simply inhabit a very strategically important fortress or keep protecting a mountain pass or mine or something. Maybe similar to the user above me, employ them to hunt bandits. Get over the sunlight weakness by a covered wagon and human army escort. I could even see a few of the evil drinkers being given generation long peerages if enough effort, virtue, and positive results are seen. I wouldn't give them hereditary nobility because they are immortal/ageless.

There would also be nations that abhor all undead culturally, and religious orders that are the same, perhaps it could cause a national war or holy crusade, even a civil war in all of those sides as the paladins say "other shit needs to be smited sooner" and the undead haters consider the morality of slaughtering a truly beneficial group to civilized society over perceived threat that can no longer be acted upon if you don't act like a bandit. Plus logistics of marching your armies that far.

All this can also be effected by the reversed curse and who knows about it. It could be as big as World War Vampire if you felt like, a political intrigue, wizard's pissing contest, and more. It could also effect only one vampire clan, one region's vampires, or the whole race, and the rumors might speak of all three for extra fun. "vampires of A are evil drinkers, vamps of B never got cursed" etc. I kinda want to play this now.

Basically this.
Elves or whatever undying, ancients have traded their freewill to some diety/old God/pantheon for empowerment. Vampire transformation rituals is one of the inventions of the heretics/free/mortal races for syphoning essence for self empowerment. Though small in number and necessitating sacrifices for more essence, they try to free others with the ritual.

Remember that time he killed a vampire with a suplex?

And face fucking them with a taser batton.

Blade 2 is fucking great

You pit them against something even worse

Long time ago, I was GMing a game in one of these real crapsack fantasy worlds. Not my cup of tea, but most of the players at the time liked it, so I rolled with it.

Anyway, big demon invasion, it looks hopeless, all obvious initiatives fail, that kind of thing. Wait to see what the players come up with

What they came up with was simultaneously convincing a clan of vampires to help against the demonic invasion (they can't eat people if the Demons burn everything) as well as the local church of the kind of LG god (we didn't have actual alignments, but close enough) that the only way to fight the demons was to feed people en masse to the vampires in order to empower them enough they could take on the demonic hordes.

It was pretty cool, actually.

This is probably the most cliche bullshit about vampires there is.

I'm pretty sure those were just ghouls.

The only kill people under or over a certain socioeconomic standard.
Everytime society starts thinking vampires are just a government boogeyman and start murdering, raping and hoarding wealth again, a new vampire is born and a single vampire can clean out Sodom and Gomorrah.

The point is that they're really kind of a bunch of psychopaths/sociopaths, but we like them anyway because we have them presented as people rather than villains. Viago even obviously feels remorse, but ultimately does it because he has to.

I doubt he could have subsisted off chickens. Maybe it's like snackfood for us. Stuff with no real nutritional value but it tastes good and it's there to eat.

Like how you could never live off of pretzels.

>Like how you could never live off of pretzels.
Don't test me.

A vampire can only drink blood that has been corrupted by a dark god or polluted from a illness or curse kind of like how we use leeches

Just trying to find an alternative to 'something even more eviler turns up' approach, don't hate

>a human fed on by a vampire is left invalid for a significant about of time, and would die without proper and immediate care
>once they recover they find themselves with great strength, enhanced senses, and amazing healing ability
>they're no longer human, but not entirely vampires either
>lasts anywhere between a few days to a month before they become human again
>provides the nation with dhampir super soldiers

Have them be voiced by Bender.

Make the humans real jerks

Well in true blood you pretend they are a gay minority

The intro to that show was really fucking good, shame about the actual show

youtube.com/watch?v=Wet5OM7RR8Q

Oh for sure, I enjoyed chunks of it but it eventually got a bit "I'm meant to root for these guys?"

Super speed, hypnotism, strength, hawtness, immortality, kill every.fucker they see and lap up blood.

Okay then I'm out. Time to join the fundamentalists.

>Recommending Twilight
pic related.

Your point has merit though. Blade is my first thought (a vampire that fights other vampires, but has to keep himself in check), but but be cautious if your group/player is too prone to edge (read: has to keep himself in check); that can go bad.

I remember there being a teetotalor vampire on the Discworld, for those who read "The Fifth Elephant." Use that if you want something safer for the group as a whole; rather than "fighting the darkness in me," have someone trying to overcome an 'addiction' despite what sating it grants him (blood = stronger, but ends up addicted again and becomes harder to control self.)

>forgot pic

>Having to live off the life of sentient people is essentially evil, how evil depends on the specifics I guess.
If they don't kill their victims I think it's less evil.
>A vampire would probably be on board fighting something that would wipe out all humans or something.
There's at least one anime/movie about just this.

Vampires had long been the foes of man and its primary predator but then arose an order of holy dentists who defanged the horror and tamed them. Now they only do good in the world, and also only eat oatmeal fortified with an iron rich red liquid which they can only suck through a straw.

It turns out that vampires were never evil as we'd always assumed, nor did they truly prey on humanity. No. They were nobly fighting a secret war against a microscopic parasitic organism that lives in human blood: the hemogoblins. These beings have secretly been influencing humanity throughout the ages, reshaping the world to their desires and designs. The vampires have been trying to suck them out one neck at a time and free us from their tiny tyranny.

The reason vampires are generally held to be evil, putting aside any lore relating them to Cain or so on, is that they are: 1) Predators of humans; 2) Work to enslave the populace. Now generally, if you get away from the first one I think you ruin the whole point of a vampire. Don't make your vampires special snowflakes, just use something else. I would address more the second aspect and think how vampires could instead be a positive.

Vampires might be sorcerers who have magic training far beyond what humans can normally acquire, and use it to protect the populace. They might be loremasters who have experience and first hand knowledge other people can't. Alternately, perhaps their condition itself gives some kind of benefit, like they can also drain the life energy from creatures far more hostile to humans that humans cannot normally harm. Or perhaps they are able to resist diseases or toxins that let them battle monsters where normal people cannot.

This can build some decent controversy about them feeding on humans. If the threat is particularly uncommon, humans might even forget it and just presume it is some story manufactured by vampires to justify their evil deeds. Why, other than these supposed immortals, no one has a grandfather who remembers hearing from his own grandfather about a first hand account of the dragon warlocks! That they arise out of hibernation anytime the sun's cycles cause the planet to warm too much is preposterous.

What's that knightly vampire clan in WFB? Blood Dragons? They always seemed pretty bro tier.

U dont

imagine the nicest guy you can think of, someone who would volunteer for red cross, or dive in front of a car for a stranger

now imagine he has sharp teeth and drinks blood

ask yourself how would he cope? where does he get blood from? does he kill anyone? how often does he turn his victims if he does?

once these questions are answered in such a way that he doesn't murder, then you have a start

Making them not evil is quite easy.

Making them the good guys... that's harder. They inherently have a number of less-than-good tendencies, what with the violence and obsession with harem collection, and the mind control and whatnot. Or they're mary sues that ruin the rest of your setting simply by their proximity.

Probably the best thing to do is nudge them into not-evil territory, and then make everyone else around them so much more horrible and evil that they're the good guys by default.

Give them a functioning and not totally shit society acting as a bulwark against something far worse.

4archive.org/board/tg/thread/44156053

Vampire East Roman Empire.

>implying
Stu a best

bump

consider that they could always be serving a greater purpose.
>legacyofkain.wikia.com/wiki/Janos_Audron

Giving them a reason to protect the herd/themselves.

Simple make it so they don't have to kill or turn when they feed and then set them up in a sort of shepherds role.
Humans make what they need so they do whatever they can to ensure there are lots of happy complacent humans about for them to feed on.

Make the villains somehow worse.

Emotional or positive energy vampires

They feed off of people's positive feelings, and found early on that doing so with no other input quickly deprived them of a food source. Vampires enacted multiple social programmes creating a quasi-utopia of happiness that they have a never ending supply, to the point they rarely feed on individuals anymore. More often they bask in the overall ambiance enjoying a kind of positive radiation that sustains them. It isnt as satisfying or filling but it seems sustainable.

Actually goof guys? Probably not. But the effects are positive.

>Mr.Rogers is the clan leader

they hunt things that hunt the population, and are worse for it in the long run. Like werewolves kill whole villages, so vampires kill werewolves, eat their blood, sometimes get a peasant sacrifice for trouble, or even a cow.

There are only few Vampires, since they pretty much never turn other people. In fact, they can only do it once or twice, so they choose their heirs carefully. Or go with their true love or whatever.
People know about this. There has been a time where Vampires needed to hide their nature and prey in the dark, all that classical shit. But they don't have to kill doing it.
Then, at some point (maybe because of social media and phones with good cameras and shit) it became public. There was a time of contempt and even progroms against vampires. But slowly some people decided to donate their blood, either directly or at a blood bank. Maybe those were people that have unknowingly been good friends with vampires, before it all became public.
And now vampires can use whatever template bonuses they get to earn more dosh, part of which they need to buy stuff from the blood bank with.
Also, I'd go with Draculas set of weaknesses. I mostly dislike how it went from "is considerably weaker in sunlight" to "instagibbed by sunlight"

That's all most likely shit, but whatever.

When human go hunt vampires, they always kill the most Evil ones first.
Racial alignment restriction are hereditary (that's why it's okay to smite baby orcs).
Since most evil vampires get kicked out of the genepool, only the Good and Neutral ones can "breed".
After a few millennia of evolution, all vampires are Lawful Good paladins. Being bit by one instantly changes your alignment and gives you class level.

Make them hipsters

hipsters are evil tho

kinda like the 2016 election

>Make the villains somehow worse.

The Major was easily one of the best villains i've seen in a good while. No hiding behind false morals, no tortured past to make him what he was, no over complicated ass backward "for the greater good" goal, just a guy looking to fuck shit up and die on the battlefield. It's a damned shame his final speech was ruined by Integra opening her fucking face to basically go "no ur wrong".

OP's pic related.

make them pretty chill and down to earth, and they feel a bit guilty about killing and eating people, but not enough to stop. Kinda like us with pigs.

>Stu
love that guy

But they're not swearwolves, they're werewolves

Make them a jerk that can see the big picture.

Good men are no more and the night never ends.
youtube.com/watch?v=OBwS66EBUcY

You don't unless you're playing with women. At which point you are expected to make them monogamous, good, sexy, and subservient (though not submissive) to the women.

Fuck the new Urban Fiction genre.

read the Andrzej Sapkowski book saga on The Witcher, there are some fine example there.

Not YW right? It's a pagan god that is not omnipotent, right?

Smart vampires are already good guys, only fools who falls for the thirst so far they kill their prey are evil. And them we hunt down, not only do they reveal us but they harm the food. Who wants the food to die when it does not have to? In fact when danger comes to our heard we defeat it, that is our way.

Neat.

Neat.

You make them boring, that's how.

I don't watch many vampire movies, but this has to be the best one I've watched, pure genius.

>Also, I'd go with Draculas set of weaknesses. I mostly dislike how it went from "is considerably weaker in sunlight" to "instagibbed by sunlight"

This. I really hate how prevalent it is, just because MUH NOSFERATU.

>implying the best kind vampire isn't the one that is almost physically invincible, but who is restricted to an arbitrary set of rules (garlic, crossing rivers etc.)
Absolutely shit taste.

bump

>ctrl + f
>Regis
>0 hits
Oh, come on.

1) [Insert political system here] with blood instead of money, things are relatively beneficial for most of the population,
or
2) The vampires only need a trivial amount of blood and the whole thing is played for laughs.

A land wherein thousands of years ago a Vampire overlord brought endless night to the earth and the resulting human slaughter pushed vamps to dominance.

Luckily the vamps in question are of the Shiki variety, so aside from the nightly deep hunger they're still the same people, just life now has to include mandatory human bloodletting. Luckily the sun was extinguished so the single most dangerous part of the old world is gone. Without that burning death ball in the sky, the vamp's natural strengths overwhelm the population with their heightened strength and sexiness etc. Through smart rationing, careful negotiating with the human rebels, a truce forms which eventually blossoms into a new world order.

Being free from death by old age and incredibly hard to kill, vamps proceed to bring humanity with them into an incredible new golden age of technology, magic, enlightenment. So long as humans pay a nightly blood tax there is enough blood that no vampires have to starve and no humans have to die. Sure there are the occasional examples of murderous lustful vampires who murder people en masse but as time goes on they become rarer (or at least better at hiding).

Centuries later in a new, better society, the vampires' study of the stars reveals a horrifying truth of the world around them.

The sun is not dead. In fact, it's more alive than anyone had ever known.

The sun is a giant, eternally immolating Skeleton God hellbent on scorching all life from the earth, sending its minions of pure daylight to be its vessels and reap all mortals and immortals

Or just make the slayers dicks. Maybe they have to consort with Demons or Great Old Ones for their mandatory crossbows and sexy leather dusters

You don't. You have them be the necessary evils. The cruel shepards who protect the human flocks from the greater dangers of the night, only so they can feed with impugnity.

Alternatively, go look up old episodes of "Forever Knight," a live action vampire TV series from the 90's. Maybe 80's, my memory is fuzzy. I remember watching it just after Highlander.

Have a group of vegatarian vampires. They constantly annoy the other vampires about human rights and alternatives feeding methods.

Walnut blood smoothies and tofu flesh necks.

I forget the name of the movie, but there was one where humans worship them, the "most faithful" (those willing to give the most blood.) rewarded in being allowed to join them in undeath, but they act as guardians of humans, essentially supernatural police. This seems a good starting point, it's similar to the "how do you make a good guy necromancer" idea.

Give him a soul and have him move to Los Angeles. Maybe throw in a side of California pussy

Variation on the theme: give him a half brother jiminey cricket, have him nice to Chicago, and throw in a side of thrall pussy

>Luckily the vamps in question are of the Shiki variety

Nigga, that's not lucky. At all. Not for humans, at least.

While they need blood they don't have drain someone dry. They can feed off of bloodbags just fine. Some will feed that way while others will stay the traditional route and feed from people either through volunteers/minions/slaves or by giving into their inner bloodlust and hunting someone then eating them.

Had an idea for a vampire mercenary who after each battle would drain the blood from enemy corpses and store it for later.

You don't.

You have them use all these bullshit excuses people are giving for why they aren't villains because there's someone or something worse.

You put them in places of power, as their long lives and tendency towards stability is mistaken for security.

You dress up what happens, with pageantry and pomp and make it an honour to be chosen, your family gets some money and you do your duty for your nation. Have it work by lottery to be fair, and use criminals to be efficient. And there's always the chance one of the Lambs that lies down with the Lions might rise again as one of them.

And then you have your players fall between the cracks. Maybe it's an innocent friend or relative judged too late - or it's like Japan where merely being in court is a sign of guilt.

Maybe they see the actual feeding, and the bodies get ripped to shreds, revealing that the opportunity to rise again is actually political. Which is excused as only being responsible, after all they'll have a position of power if they do rise.

Maybe they just had the bad luck to be chosen themselves and don't want to die.

Or they stopped and said "Wait a fucking moment, instead of tolerating a lesser evil to hold off a greater one, why don't we fucking chuck them both out".

There's plenty of ways to make Vampires the "Good Guys" you see, but the problem is that they still are and will always be monsters.

Hellsing, I guess. Ok, Alucard would still kill humans if needed, but on the other side, most of the time, he fight against vampires to save humanity...

>Ok, Alucard would still kill humans if needed,

Change that to "Allowed".

Have their main method of feeding be taken care of. Something like volunteer bleeders or even just a working deal with the local blood banks.

The vampires are the aloof aristocracy, ruling from their castles, spires and towers in a land permanently overcast. Yes, there is a blood tithe required of their subjects, but the vampires have long since worked out that if they reproduced too often and fed too much, they'd just drive themselves to starvation and ruin.

They went one step further, and improved on the concept. Better diets and healthier lifestyles for their populace leads to better tasting and more invigorating blood. Advanced agriculture and medicine means that they can create more of their own kind without putting a dent in the lives of their subjects due to higher population density.

When the paladins roll into town and ask where the vampire lord of the settlement is, they are kindly asked to leave. A few pints of blood a month isn't a bad price to pay to live in a decent society. Oh, it's no utopia, of course, but it's genuinely better than many other places that they could live instead.

The vampires, meanwhile, are immortal, have lived for centuries, and don't deal well with change. They appreciate the status quo on a level that mortals couldn't really understand, and will viciously defend it if necessary. Not out of the kindness of their hearts, but those people are THEIR subjects, and can belong to nobody else.

Take a pre-existing set of good guys and call them "vampires".

>my fucking face when I didn't get to see an antediluvian in his full, awakened glory

>Like twilight
I know your probably 'avin a giggle, but when the protagonists enable baby eating vampires, that are well aware that said babies who survive will then go on a killing spree, all the while in constant agony from a bloodlust they can't control or understand, you don't get to call them good.