Vampire Rewrite (Underway)

[Nanako]

Okay here's some cool thoughts, tying in with the idea you mentioned a few weeks ago about providing longer form gameplay.

Allow a crystallised vampire soul to be an item. An item of great power. It could be used as a power cell anywhere that cells are normally allowed (with more capacity than any existing), or it could be broken down in a deconstructive analyser to unlock some new content in R&D.

Or it could be put into a grenade, and with the right concoction in the other side to stimulate it, make a really cool eldritch bomb.

[Guest]

Allow a crystallised vampire soul to be an item. An item of great power. It could be used as a power cell anywhere that cells are normally allowed (with more capacity than any existing), or it could be broken down in a deconstructive analyser to unlock some new content in R&D.

Or it could be put into a grenade, and with the right concoction in the other side to stimulate it, make a really cool eldritch bomb.

 

These probably wouldn't be used, maybe the grenade, but never once or twice in a lifetime.

Counter-proposition. Allow vampires to create specific soul gems to steal the souls of either crewmembers or fellow vampires (hefty blood cost, etc etc). They can imbue an item, such as a toolbox, stun baton, fireaxe or whatever else, with the soul(s) in the gem. The more souls in the gem, the more powerful the imbued item becomes. This could be as simple as adding some additional brute to the item to adding some more interesting damaging or perhaps healing effects. Stealing a vampire soul actually allows you to choose from the table of applicable effects, but their severity is still random. With any other soul, the effects are random. Also, souls trapped in the item have their default body set to the item. They can re-enter the body and whisper through the item.

Thoughts?

[Skull132]

Erm, real quick, what are these ideas for specifically? As an ability to gain after consuming another vamp's soul, or as a general power suggestion?

Also, I took a bit of a break to tend to family business and friends. Going to be writing the progression system over the next 2 days. Going with linear progression, as majority seemed to like. And I may write the vampire handle proc relatively quickly as well.

After that, all I need to manage is the Frenzy code. Which may or may not be !FUN!.

[Nanako]

I think those ideas were for diablerie things.

Here's a quick general idea: Make food and drinks containing blood help to feed the vampire's stored and total blood. There's quite a lot of them, like Demon's Blood, Devil's Kiss, Red Mead, Brain Burger, 'Tomato Soup', Brain Cake,

Ordering such things at the bar would provide a fun RP way to feed

The amounts would be small, but 20-30 points from such a thing could still be good

[Nanako]

Oh regarding the rebirth idea that others have mentioned, i think it could work. I have an implementation idea.

If a vampire dies while still posessing the soul of another vampire that they gained through diablerie, then the vampire (the one who just died) is reincarnated into a new body, allowing them to respawn as a new character and still be a vampire, as well as keeping some portion (maybe 50%) of their previous Total Blood

The new chararacter thing is only a ruse. RP wise, they are still the same vampire, just with a new name and face (plus job and access), their thralls from before are still bound to them. Perhaps on the death of the vampire, all the thralls could recieve a message 'Your Master is not yet truly dead, they will return very soon, continue to follow their last orders until they make contact'

Since this requires a vampire to die in order to respawn you, it doesn't mean a net increase in the total vampires (embracing notwithstanding), and i'd say it would only work with the souls of original (chosen at roundstart) vampires, and maybe not with ones that were embraced during the round.

It'd be a way for a vampire to have a fresh start, and return to stealth/social enthralling, after they get caught and die in a huge battle, which often occurs. And they would probably have to play it sneaky, since if they just died under such circumstances, the station is going to be swarming with ERT and heavily armed security

[Guest]

Suggestion: Make a new chemistry recipe that is complex and can't be made without getting things from Botany or something, but cures vampirism when injected, or perhaps significantly weakens them.

[SilverTalismen]

I think that holy artifacts, such as the null rod and bible should burn the vampire, like

McVampirepicks up the vampire picks up TheHolyBibleofSpacePizza

Mcvampire screams in pain, dropping what is in their left hand, smoke rising from TheHolyBibleofSpacePizza!

But, thats up to you, And maybe have a round type were cult and vampires are in?

[Guest Complete Garbage]

Maybe have an endgame ability for cultists to convert one of their members into a vampire.

[Nanako]

Following testing with you today, a brief feedback list:

• -Presence seemed a tiny bit too spammy, increase the delay by 20%
  
• -Glare doesn't work as a flash. Causes no blind/blurriness effects. It only knocks people down. It should work properly like a flash, complete with the vision loss
  
• -Dominate commands are too subtle, they need to be more noticeable. Aside from a larger font size and brighter colour, I think there should also be a sound effect (that only the victim hears). For example: https://www.freesound.org/people/IanStarGem/sounds/341841/
  
• -Make embracing actually work.
  
• -Make food/drinks containing blood, increase the vampire's useable blood. Add some code to blood's affect_ingest to benefit vampires, and then add some code to the drinks to make them put the appropriate amount of blood into the stomach
  
• -Add the memory-wiping message to being fed on, make sure its noticeable
  
• -Also recommend adding some more messages for the victim being fed on. For a start, instead of ''s neck', the victim could instead see 'Your body goes numb as you feel 's fangs sinking into your neck'.
  
• -And then maybe some more messages during feeding, like 'You feel light-headed as the life is slowly drained from your body'
  
• -Chiropteran screech should really have a sound effect too. This is public domain for example:
  
  https://www.freesound.org/people/nick121087/sounds/333832/

[MagnificentMelkior]

If you want to make Diablerie true to WoD, then give the vampire the total blood value of the one they consumed (since that mechanically serves the same purpose as their level/generation rank) if it is higher, and learn their special powers if any.

You also expressed interest in reworking the progression, and I think the WoD way is good here too, and it would solve your diablerie problem for you at the same time. Make the core vampire powers be unlocked automatically from blood totals, and let the vampire choose two Disciplines. A childe should be forced to take at least one of its parent's disciplines

Disciplines in WoD are Presence, Dominate, as you created, but also Celerity (super speed and reduced click-delay as a temporary buff), something that makes you beastly (brute resistant, dangerous claws), Blood and Fire magic (Can't think of anything good here, except maybe a red colored magic missile). Another good one could be summoning a dire wolf, or a couple of normal (evil) wolves. Basically they'd be stronger, faster, differently sprited bats).

I think dominate and presence should just be included, and then you can use a generation mechanic because all of the powers I listed here could be scaled up (faster fastness, tougher toughness and claws, more/tougher wolves.) Maybe starting vampires are rank 2, and any siring is one rank down from the sire (with 0 being thinblood, who have no access to the Disciplines). Could have a rank 3 for events, but above that probably isn't worth coding.)

So in summary:

diablerie is, true to source, only useful when done on a superior vampire, so diablerizing your children is worthless.

Vampires pick 2 disciplines (although make them require some blood-total before they can utilize them)

Diablerie lets you steal a vampires blood total, if higher, and disciplines known. I also recommend it adding all their actual blood plus a moderate flat amount to your blood, mathematically after your blood total was raised.

Generation mechanic, to give children another reason to diablerize.

Also, I recommend diablerie be doable on a dead vampire as well. It should take considerable time though, since you have to eat all their flesh in the source material.

If you like this idea I can come up with some more disciplines, because the list does need a bit of padding. I'd probably start with invisibility, and blood magic. Could throw in fleshcrafting, ala Tzimche. Raid the morgue to create horrible monsters. But Tzimche are disgusting and might be breaking the "social vampire" mold.

[Skull132]

Xander: I think there should be a certain finality to being a vampire. Any cures should be rumor or unconfirmed gossip.

As far as diablerie goes, I'm going to keep thinking on it. Buuut I won't stall the update push because of it. Same with future powers. Otherwise it'll be worked on forever and ever. (Same with potential cult integration.)

Most bugs and issues found in runtime testing were fixed (surprisingly fewer than I expected). Initial implementation Soon - 1.

Also, Nanako. Only bloodbags will give vampires blood. A vampire already gains only 10 units per every 25 units drained from a living victim (5 from a dead one), so the amounts contained in any food items will be in the decimals.

[Nanako]

Any opinion in regards to sound effects? I linked two which i felt suitable. There are plenty of others on that site, and many other directories, the internet has a vast swathe of public-domain sound effects, and we could probably use things with a noncommercial license too

[Nikov]

I would like to see vampires able to husk corpses ala ling and somehow draw blood runes ala cult, to further confuse metagaming.

[Brightdawn]

Silver should do more damage to Vampires giving mining a use in an antag round finally.

Silver is a common weakness to vampires in fiction so it makes sense!

[Zundy]

Silver should do more damage to Vampires giving mining a use in an antag round finally.

Silver is a common weakness to vampires in fiction so it makes sense!

 

Silver swords, stakes and bolts.

We Blade now.

[Brightdawn]

Silver should do more damage to Vampires giving mining a use in an antag round finally.

Silver is a common weakness to vampires in fiction so it makes sense!

 

Silver swords, stakes and bolts.

We Blade now.

 

Heck even the silver baseball bat should do more damage it wouldn't be toooo hard to add something to silver thats like ( IF vampire brute mod = 1.5 )

[Zundy]

Silver should do more damage to Vampires giving mining a use in an antag round finally.

Silver is a common weakness to vampires in fiction so it makes sense!

 

Silver swords, stakes and bolts.

We Blade now.

 

Heck even the silver baseball bat should do more damage it wouldn't be toooo hard to add something to silver thats like ( IF vampire brute mod = 1.5 )

 

Why not burn damage for the toppest of keks?

[Guest Complete Garbage]

giving mining a use in an antag round finally.

 

They can make diamond spears that do 50 damage xD

But yeah, I can see where you're coming from, this is a good idea.

[Pozzie]

the idea of lobbing refined silver at vampires sounds amusing until you consider how obnoxious it would be to deal with as said vampire