How would you put a fresh spin on vampires?

How would you put a fresh spin on vampires?

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Literally play them straight, we're living in an age of deconstruction so obsessed with subverting expectations that an honest-to-goodness haughty decadent nobleman the villagers rightfully fear as a wolf-controlling, bat-shifting, blood-sucking bastard is fresh.

Get this: instead of blood, they feed on semen

I feel like almost every hentai with vampires uses this twist.

Odin please go.

Instead of sucking blood, they blow it.

THANK YOU. I hope reconstructed fantasy comes into vogue, I'm tired of lazy remixes.

You put all the vampires in your story.

The monstrous flesheating "zombie" vampires. The regal hypnotic vampire that sucks virgins dry. The dark vampire that tries to hold on their humanity. The edgy vampire-killing vampire that works with humanity. The "vegan" vampire that lives off bloodpacks, volunteer blood or animal blood. The IDGAF "STANDO POWAH" powerhungry vampire. The noble warrior vampire that lives to kill warriors through the ages, looking for that one warrior that will kill him in a fair fight. The vampire that beats back his bloodlust and regains his humanity through sheer willpower. The shadowy vampire who is so ancient all of reality folds down into a chessboard. The vampire that's more animal than man.
There's so much fun you can have with vampires if you stop thinking about vampires as some [defined D&D definition box].

And most importantly, think about the age of the vampire and the historical events and movements they experienced.
Imagine some warrior vampire from the Viking era that has slaughtered himself throughout the ages, experiencing the Cuban Missile crisis on TV or the radio. Suddenly faced with impending doom from a man-made sun on the Earth itself - no way to defend himself. No blade or gun can save him. Except for Kennedy and Khrushchev talking it out.
That would have a profound effect on him.
Or imagine some French vampire who was embraced and enslaved by some Bronze-age vampire just before the French Revolution. As he sees the fire and smoke, the chaos, the fighting during the night, he waits until day, when his Master goes to sleep, and opens his coffin and with a wooden stake in hand ends a 3000-year vampire at the same time the Sun King is beheaded.

I dunno man.

>No blade or gun can save him. Except for Kennedy and Khrushchev talking it out.

Interesting premise for a character forced into a paradigm shift that severe

The closest thing my setting has to vampires are the hosts of an intelligent parasite inspired by the tongue-eating louse and bobbit worms.

Check out Fritz Liebers 'The girl with the hungry eyes'
>And this is what she said,
>I want you. I want your high spots. I want everything that’s made you happy and everything that’s hurt you bad. I want your first girl. I want that shiny bicycle. I want that licking. I want that pinhole camera. I want Betty’s legs. I want the blue sky filled with stars. I want your mother’s death. I want your blood on the cobblestones. I want Mildred’s mouth. I want the first picture you sold. I want the lights of Chicago. I want the gin. I want Gwen’s hands. I want your wanting me. I want your life. Feed me, baby, feed me.

I make them tiny, female, and able to drink you under the table

(innuendo not intended)

Not that this is going to be widely usable, but in my game, there are energy vampires, which are kind of like reverse-zombies. Basically, every person has a hollow space in their chest that contains their soul--puncture it, and they die. The soul provides the vital life-energy that keeps people going. It is the source of passion and emotion. Releasing the soul is like pulling the batteries out of an appliance.

Inside the head, a mind crystal takes the place of the brain. It is the seat of logic and calculation. Traumatic injury to head can certainly put you out of commission--kill you, even--but it might not be a permanent deal. If your soul remains trapped inside its cavity, there is still an animus urging your body on, even if your mental faculties are severely damaged. This process takes a while after "death" to take effect, and when people rise, they are usually mindlessly bestial and savage. They also lack the equilibrium necessary to preserve the body over long periods of time, and the flesh tends to burn with the unregulated energy keeping it going, charring and rotting away over time.

That's a zombie: soul intact but no mind. Vampires are the other way around. Their soul has been released, but their life is preserved by magic. Lacking the energy that the soul provides, they must drain it from others in order to sustain themselves. Needless to say, this isn't a healthy process for the person being drained, even if the vampire is restraining themselves, which is often not the case. With a mind but no soul, vampires tend to be largely cold and calculating, pretty much the mirror opposite of zombies.

I wouldn't, Warhammer vampires are about how I like it.

Smuggest of smugpires.

bat-face goblins

To continue with combining important historical events and vampires...

Consider a vampiress who used to be a priestess of some moon temple in the Middle-East thousands of years ago watching the Moon landing live on TV.

Vampires don't exist, only posers who dress like vampires and everyone cringes at.

They are divided into two clans: One who sucks blood only from people with diabetes and the other clan who idolizes numbers. They war everyday and try to recruit human children to their cause through clever propaganda tactics.

Vampires are just alchemists who make potions using human blood as a base. Initially these potions give them user extra power so alchemists began mixing their potions with other blood to make them more potent. The problem is that 1. The potions are more addictive than mega meth and 2. a demigod was killed and drained to make these blood potions. Their parent diety (of the Sun) threw a bitch fit and using the sun as his watchful eye burns any potion user he sees.

Reminds me of iZombie's take on vampires.

The vampires in my games don't suck blood; they scrape and lick.

vampires:
>immortal
>strong
>attractive
>fast
>can fly
>have undead minions
>sexy orgies

>humans willing converted to vampirism
>entire empire is now filled and ruled by undead sexy immortal vamps
>humans are seen as weird, but needed
>healthy humans are FAR better to have as food and are treated like prized cattle
>vamps show off their best humans in shows
>the strongest most attractive healthiest humans become breeding stock
>treated like beloved pets
>vamps need them to last longer
>create medicine for humans to prolong human life

eventually
>humans are now all super strong, healthy, attractive, smart and live long lives in luxury
>true hedonistic empire
>occasionally get nibbled on by their masters
>undead minions for EVERYONE
>vampires become great scientists and scholars
>not hunted to death by holy fuckers
>vampires rule the night, they learn build and create for the humans
>humans rule the day, they work only to elevate their masters name
>everybody wins!

tfw no vampire master

Make them exactly as Bram Stoker made his Dracula and assorted vampires. They're gonna be so different from what 'everybody knows' about Dracula your players won't even recognize them as vampires.

That's a neat idea. My only worry would be that she's become jaded and cynical towards her past at that point.

>Leech-like
>Ugly
>Barbarian slav imitating proper English gentlemen
>Nocturnal, as in prefers night by does not explode in sunlight, that would be silly.
>Non-magical
>The key to defeating them is to use SCIENCE! And proper english virtues like calmness under fire and sexual restraint.

Not physically superior in any way, relying soley on supernatural charm and enchantment in order to feed. Not confident, but rather paranoid about concealing their presence. Reluctant to turn anyone for this reason.

Why would you choose to become vampire when you could be a lich?

Liches are better on all grounds except moral, and even that depends on the vampire.

Alucard from hellsing is totally cool, and the jojos vampires are the kind of bullcrap you could get with moving things with magic, not with biology.

Isn't that just the Chinese Vampire?

Some of still has illusions of carnal pleasures user.

But you can still do stuff as a lich.

Being a wizard is a thing you have to do to be a lich. You can cast spells to let you do things of the flesh, and you don't have to feed on people to do it.

Some people just want undesth with no effort

>Isn't that just the Chinese Vampire?
No idea. Chinese vampires are vulcan energy drainers?

Martin.

youtu.be/Fb6TR791664

...

Have them be pissed off /pol/ tier nobles from the Balkans that sold their humanity down the river in order to keep the turks out, and have become more cynical and enraged over the more recent centuries as their one reason for existing this long is becoming null and void in the eyes of most mortals. They're not "sexy" or anything, just extremely territorial and disconnected; at this point trying to rule the villages around their castle (if they're still there) through either a physical or mental playbook on ruling that they made in their early days. They're extremely hard to kill, as usual, and have superhuman speed and strength. They only avoid the sun these days because it "dries them out," which causes them to need more blood that week.

Tl;dr: Basically the Tzimisce, only most probably never -have- and never will embrace, have the single task of keeping the turks out, and don't have bitchin' fleshcrafting powers.

>Modern setting where the Vampires of old are roused from their slumber by the migrant crisis
>You play as full on /pol/pires attempting to find the remains of Vlad so you can awaken the one amongst you who hated the Ottoman the most in order to protect Europe from the bullshit going down
>Merkel is secretly a werewolf or some shit
Admit it.
You'd play it.

Make them based on Mosquitos or Ticks, maybe Leeches. The idea is that Vampirism is actually a sentient disease and controls the vampires like a Hivemind or something.

Darkest dungeon did them great.

Lampreys and hagfish are infinitely more terrifiying then insects, so use them instead tho

there's a fuckup waiting to happen here
like what if Murrica grabbed Vlad's corpse and turned it into a Terminator
or maybe Vlad is still active and removing kebab from the shadows, but hates the /pol/pires

Same user here;
Also have them see those that they have serving them as most people see dogs- generally good, loyal creatures, but they don't live all that long compared to you. The troublesome and outright dangerous ones have to be put down unless you need a guard dog/ something for war.

Make them Veeky Forums
Narcissists obsessed with aesthetics, feels and "making it". Crippling insecurities, underlying fear of women and evident homosexuall tendencies.

I remember a quest that did this.

Stop these lies, Veeky Forums is not gay, Veeky Forums does not hate women.
We are a board of self-improvement, friendship and funny memes.

They only live during the day, not during the night.
The darkness burn their flesh and destroy their souls.
They live off life energy given with consent.

Came here to post exactly this. Good on you, user.

>We are a board of self-improvement

please don't lie

I've been wanting to run a game for a while where a group of vampires tries to find humans to suck, but realized all the humans have been replaced with other vampires, snatchers, pod people, werewolves, lizardmen, and etcetera.

A buddy of mine has a semitic myth inspired vampires in his setting. The blood "contains" the soul, and vampires drink blood to consume the soul.That's why they go after humans and other intelligent beings and not animals.

>Veeky Forums is not gay
HERESY

Everything old is new again.

I think that Darkest Dungeon did a pretty good job with the DLC. They are decedant hedonists with the enlightenment era powdered wigs and costumes, but instead of the bat mostif, they have a mosquito mostif, and having giant mosquitos as familiars and pets.

Really quick, can I get a citation? Not trying to disprove your claim but I've heard it before and want to know where in mythology that Odin was a cum guzzling faggot.

You're just the times. OSR has a lot of traction these days, a large part of which is about reconstructing classic fantasy.

Life energy suckers bought to life by negative energy making them suck life force to fuel themselves.

Seriously, right now, playing the old trope makes people go like 'oh shit i didn't expect this, this is so good'

Not that guy, but I've actually been looking for this myself and I can't find any reliable sources. It seems like a pretty popular story which has been popping up since early 2016, but the best "source" I've seen was some neo-pagan faggotry that I certainly wouldn't consider a reliable source.

I have a theory that the whole story is mostly based on the fact that homosexuality (in specific referring to taking it up the ass and not necessarily to fucking a male - which is a major contrast acknowledged by many cultures all over the world) was "argr" (unmanly) and that magic was also "argr". So with Odin being a male magician, perhaps that got conflated with being a faggot somewhere along the line.

>Admit it.
>You'd play it.
Nah.

A game based on real-life politics is just begging for autistic drama.

I say go back further; Carmilla (although this basically just means making them a blatant lesbian metaphor)

They're closer to blood sucking insects than anything else. When fed, they can maintain their humanoid appearance. But when thirsty, they mutate and morph into a grotesque monster. At that point all pretense of humanity is gone. They exist only to feed. That means tearing open veins, slurping down the life fluids as they gush out, jamming their proboscis-nose straight into the beating heart of a mortal, and draw blood straight from the center of their circulatory system. Dismember them and extract the marrow straight from the bone while they're still alive.

These are creatures that view humans as prey. Not like some sort of sexual Twilight-y, or even Dracula-y kind of way. They see you the same way a spider sees a fly: a moving sac of nourishing fluid waiting to be cracked open.

I was going to say this as well. Of course, I have always adored classic vampires. I loved them even in Heroes of Might and Magic 4, and I was deeply disappointed how poorly they worked in Vampire Bloodlines when that was released.

youtube.com/watch?v=iHT5YLTZa_w

Mine are just pretty much Werebats. Lycanthropes also get a larger variety of weaknesses and powers, making them more Vampire like.

They're all just the vengeful spirits of nature spirits that seek the flesh and blood of the living or the souls of the dead. They become bound to whoever they bite, allowing them to take on their appearance/control them/curse them/whatever.

Vampires are actually humans hosting a parasitic organisim. The creature resides within the flesh of the neck and chest and connects itself to the host's circulatory system and to a limited extent nervous system. Removing the parasite without killing the host is basically impossible. The parasite increases its host's metabolic rate and surpreses sensation of fatigue resulting in a fast healing tireless but eternally hungry and thirsty individual. Unsurprisingly this tends to result in the host body wearing out at which point the parasite will drive them into a frenzied state where they will expend all their remaining energy capturing and restraining a new potential host.
When infected hosts meet they will (regardless of the hosts' genders) form a couple long enough for the parasites to mate and then work together to capture fresh hosts for the young.

>The monstrous flesheating "zombie" vampires. The regal hypnotic vampire that sucks virgins dry. The dark vampire that tries to hold on their humanity. The edgy vampire-killing vampire that works with humanity. The "vegan" vampire that lives off bloodpacks, volunteer blood or animal blood. The IDGAF "STANDO POWAH" powerhungry vampire. The noble warrior vampire that lives to kill warriors through the ages, looking for that one warrior that will kill him in a fair fight. The vampire that beats back his bloodlust and regains his humanity through sheer willpower. The shadowy vampire who is so ancient all of reality folds down into a chessboard. The vampire that's more animal than man.
There's so much fun you can have with vampires if you stop thinking about vampires as some [defined D&D definition box].

Well good job, you invented Vampire: the Masquerade.

They're a semi-sentient flying nocturnal predator that's big enough to take a human and could be mistaken for one from a distance. They're really just animals, but they're scary motherfuckers so there's a lot of folk stories attached to them.

I usually either stick closer to the old "sold your soul to the devil" concept or go with the modern
"blood faeries" shtick.

VtM still puts you in a [defined D&D definition box].

It just has more boxes.

They feed on lymph

Or in other words... get rid of all the clans. Make vampires truly unique with unique abilities. No set rules on what kind of abilities a vampire gets or how many. One vampire might just be nocturnal humans that burn incredibly easy in the sun and eat raw bloody steak to whom garlic feels like mustard gas and has to avoid silver and holy water or he'll literally start melting away. Some vampires might be eating two hobos a day to function and have enough vampiric superpowers to make your average autistic D&D 3.5 player scream OP munchkin at the top of his lungs.

Vampire hunters might have to deal with a human that's just a bit faster and heals quicker, or they might have to deal with fucking bloodsucking Superman. This uncertainty brings oh so much more to games.

In my setting vampires are a combination of some of the old german legends mixed with a super soldier program. Vampyrs, blutsaugers, nachtzehrers, etc. I discarded a lot of the "classic" (read: modern) vampire mythos, except for the sunlight trope. That functions as a control mechanism - they were supplied with a special salve that would deactivate modified nociceptors in the skin. Without it, they would experience insane, excruciating, mind numbing pain when exposed to sunlight.

Basically, vampires were crafted for the purpose of hounding insurgents and fulfilling SOCOM type duties. They don't drink blood, they eat souls. They do have fangs, but these are for the purpose of delivering venom. The brain is the seat of the soul, and once the venom works its way into the brain, they can either turn the person into another vampire (a feature added for the purpose of turning friendly casualties into new assets) or just devour their soul. Alternatively, they can consume brain matter and achieve the same result.

Like any machine or any biological organism, they suffer problems due to aging. So long as they have maintenance staff to support them and repair damages, then they're effectively immortal. But none do. As a consequence, they have a set lifespan. Near the end, their body will start to fall apart entirely, and you get the shambling rotting horrors described in plenty of German folk tales.

In spite of the damage caused by aging, much like aged humans, they can typically still produce viable, normal vampires. Degradation is caused by use. If they don't reproduce often, then the built in repair mechanisms usually suffice, so you could make a perfectly healthy vampire from even the oldest. Though once it becomes a shambling corpse, probably not.

Silly user, of course we would become liches if given the choice.

All vampire threads are waifu threads.

>you will never nuzzle your face between the strong smooth thighs of an amazonian vampiress

Why would I want to?

Blood isn't necessary for them to survive, it just acts as a stimulent.
They aren't another race, just an off-shoot of humans like a particular family line or something. No supernatural powers or weaknesses, just increased strength/speed/agility/etc when they drink blood that increases the longer they continue to do so and tapers off without intake.
If you want some uber-bad vampires in this world, make them blood addicts. They hate the feeling of powerlessness and so drink blood as often as possible.
I may have given this a good bit of thought before

The conflation comes with the association that Seidr, the form of magic Odin mastered, was a feminine art and furthermore involved rituals that required the drinking of semen

Why become a vampire, and or a Lich?
I'd imagine with all the deities, and or magic that is accessible there would be more alternatives than the two. If immortality is what you seek.

I had a pale stranger in the night in my game, and played him absolutely straight. He just appeared, wounded, to the doorstep of my players' residence (A house on a giant Tortoise) in the dead of night.

He asked whether he could come in, and they tended his wounds. They gave the stranger shelter and a bed, and he promptly went to rest.

Next morning, one of the characters felt sick, anemic. No one ever noticed the bite marks on his body. This continued for a while, the stranger waking up late, never hungry, and this one fella getting more anemic by the day.

Then on the third day they get it as he wakes up in the evening. They force him to dine with them, and he insists that he is not hungry, struggling to eat the food in front of him.

Then someone just straight up says: "We know you're a Vampire, mister"

It took them three in-game days, I think hour or two game-time to realize that this pale dude, who only moves at night, asked to come into the house and caused a weird sickness in one of the characters, is a vampire.

Play it straight, it will be entertaining.

Prequel to the snobby shit

>Vampire: The Origin story

Can go in a couple of directions, I am partial to the idea of morally ambiguous slave soldiers for a brutal sorcerer king that rebelled.

That's more or less what I said, isn't it.

That's not a vampire, that's just your mom.

>Veeky Forums is not gay
That's like saying post-taking-itself-seriously-40k isn't for socially awkward 14 year olds

>funny
>memes
pick one.

depowered vampires. make them immortal serial killers who have to drink blood to survive, but they have no supernatural powers or weaknesses.

This has been done

A lich is a withered creaky corpse who foregoes all carnal pleasures, whereas a vampire sustains a sort of half-life as a superhuman predatory existence and can have it all.

Why be the incel nerd when you can be the jock to rule them all?

Vampirism is not the result of some supernatural phenomena or experiment in any way, instead it is a state of mind. Think of the dancing mania of the 14th and 15th century, where people would mysteriously start to dance until they died of dehydration simply because other people were doing it near them. Replace the dancing with a fixation of blood and fear of the day and bingo, you have vampirism caused by mass hysteria. I think what makes it scary is how "grounded" it is in the real world, as in you could imagine a person doing this if they are mentally unstable enough.

No, you said that people were falsely and dishonestly equating the two because they were both "unmanly", when in fact one was specifically and explicitly part of the other.

They're all very nice and kind of awkward
youtube.com/watch?v=Cv568AzZ-i8

>Decide to put a vampire into my last game.
>Rip off Dracula as hard as I can. The character from the original book, mind.
>Old gentleman in a large run down estate way out in the mountains.
>Drop every hint and clue that this middle age looking gent who wears clothes way out of date and has mannerisms from several centuries ago is a vampire.
>Still takes the party two game sessions to figure out the guy they're staying with IS A VAMPIRE.
>They spend the next session speculating in and out of character how I'm spinning this, end up trying to help the guy because he'he's clearly just misunderstood/isn't hurting anyone/dindu nuffin.
>Game ends with the last surviving member of the party sprinting through the woods with the rest of the party, turned into Renfields, chasing him with the goal of dragging him back to their master to be turned.

That's how I vampire. I'm not allowed to anymore.

They're also mostly remorseless murderers?

But they're so nice tho

You watched that episode of Mighty Max, by chance?

>vampires learning alongside humanity that they too are just insignificant specks of dust in the cosmos
>that one millenia-old guy who works at NASA, because if we don't get off this planet he might live to see it's inevitable destruction
>modern technology (and bureaucracy) making it harder and harder to avoid being outed as ageless
Even the current rate of scientific progress might be terrifying to a being used to relatively gradual shifts in lifestyle.

...

>>humans are now all super strong, healthy, attractive, smart and live long lives in luxury
no, they will become fat cattle

I hope in the near future you get in a serious enough car accident to keep you from posting this garbage again for a while.

>How would you put a fresh spin on vampires?
Spin? They use fidget spinners. See, we're current already, we relate to the modern youth and their interest!
Make them not just sparkle, but have aura of radiance. And rose or cherry blossom petals spinning around them. Girls love it.
Vampires are all about beautiful, immortal people starved for romance, right? Twilight taught us that the creepy stalkers with bipolar disorder and mania making them switch from self-loating isolationism to psychotic, controlling behavior is what it is all about! So make vampires sensual, oversexualized drama queens!

Subvert everything, even if it doesn't make sense! As creatures of darkness, they really wish and long for divine mercy - make it turn out that they avoid crosses and holy water because they're so sad and don't want to accost god-fearing folk and their tools with their unholy presence! They are so sorry for making others waste their holy water and having to pull out crosses they run away in (manly) tears!
Make sure they're all LGBTQA+! It's in! Staunch supporters of feminist ideals, the males are submissive, loving gentlemen not only not afraid but in love with period blood, as it is befitting their nature! All vampire ladies are robust, rebellious, strong women with supernatural powers who don't have to wear even leather/latex - since it only encuourages unrealistic body expectations! Make them healthy but slightly chubby, on basis of their varied vegan blood diet!

And if you want less of a shitpost, go with - just without making it a carbon copy of vampires of old. Make realistic characters, with good and bad sides, rather than perepetually brooding, always scheming evil dudes or eternally misjudged good people. Make a regular, interesting character with typical vampire traits and trappings and then just add vampirism and think how it would affect such a person, their lifestyle, attitude.

Not really a fresh spin but I like it.
>superpowerful, eternally young and beautiful creatures stalking through the night, to forcefully, but expertly, with great skill and expertise of generations - bring men to orgasm after orgasm to sate their hunger for cum.

That hits quite many of my fetishes so I am fine with it.