Most interesting was the psychological need for companionship. It introduces the idea that vampires have the same type of need for social interaction as humans do, and as a vampire gets older and older, it starts to lose its sanity unless it can find other similarly long-lived peers.
This is a differentiating feature from, say, a lich or a mummy, both of which are usually solitary creatures and can exist for millennia without losing their self-direction.
This also explains why vampires may prey on hapless youths and maidens, whereas liches and mummies, for the most part, stay in the shadows and crypts.
- Understanding the human mind's learning cycle from a psychological point of view
- Sociological aspects of human behavior
- Effects of aging on the human condition
- Attachment/detachment disorders
- Guilt complexes
Of course, this joins the other 10,000 writing projects I want to complete... I haven't even been to the Warlock Circle thread in weeks...
What I was looking for is I don't exactly remember the key words, but on an internet search of a subject similar, I found an HTML page noting the life of a vampire. Some key points I remember.
Most Vampires don't even outlive their mortal lifespans. Being a vampire is fun for the first few years, yet it tires and there are few over 30 years a vampire. Something about the thrill not being what it was.
Vampires were mostly solitary. Being in groups builds conflicts.
Vampires too seek a love, a mate. There was a story how an old vampire found one, made her a vampire, yet she betrayed him and lead vampire hunters to his liar. He quickly killed the vampire hunters and hunted his former love down, though it broke his heart, he had to destroy her.
I wish I could find it again. It was a good read and all my key word searches yields nothing.
ETA: which means the site was probably C&Ded for copyright violations.
1) gothic-punk romantic struggle, the moden take typified by Ann Rice and World of Darkness. "Monsters we are lest monsters we Become" is right out of the VtM 2nd edition guide. This makes Vampires romantic-figures, tragic and the like. If you read too much Ann Rice, they even tend to be gay for some reason.
2) Gothic take (the take of Bram Stoker et all). They are demons, pure and simple. no soul, no chance to gain it back. Evil beings. Closest they get to ramance is ****. Any romantic interest is a foul corruption of their tastes and preferences in life.
D&D tends to be somewhere in between the two...they are all Chaotic Evil corruptions of their former selves, with romance as a way to allviate the bordom of immortality. Not tragic heroes/gay sissies like in WoD/Ann Rice, but demonic beings with just enough humanity to pretend in order to hunt effectivly...and procreate. This mix works best for Ravenloft, in that the vampire has enough humanity left to be tortured for his sins, but not so much that they steal the spotlight and struggle from the PCs...but rather are 'demons' (evil beings, not demonic in origin like old school gothic, but tied to the negative energy plane) that need to be destroyed...
To answer the question on psychology, look at their alignmnet restriction. They don't run the full gammet of human psychology, because they don't run the full gammit of human alignments....they're chaotic evil, so take that into account. They have romantic entanglements and seem to cross their feeding habbits with their sexuality...so that should also be noted (all taken from Strahd as a typified example). Basically? evil beings that use their former (demi)humanity to hunt/feed on sentient beings. To them, only the strong deserve to survive, and they are stronger than their mortal prey. They are hunters, we are prey. simple. Of course, they're also intelligent, so things are never that simple...
note: this was a quick-attempt at an answer, use it as a guideline
Over the years, centuries even, it is more than probable that an individual blessed/cursed with vampirism would undergo several changes of personality, if not out of experimentation due to perhaps boredom, then by progression through both natural and manufactured circumstances.
I can't help you with your request other than by offering this.
I'd go as far to say that you should treat vampires like you do humans; full-ranged and of all alignments.
Over the years, centuries even, it is more than probable that an individual blessed/cursed with vampirism would undergo several changes of personality, if not out of experimentation due to perhaps boredom, then by progression through both natural and manufactured circumstances.
I can't help you with your request other than by offering this.
Thanks, Ghost. This is more the direction I tend to go regarding vampires; to say (as the MM does) that all vampies are CE-aligned denies them the intelligence they are hallmarked. Intelligence implies will; will is defined as the opportunity to make choices. In all the realms of possibility, there is - MUST be - room for non-CE vampires. Evil ones should still be the norm, but exceptions exist to every rule.
BTW, the previous note I wrote regarding the "treatise" - I have submitted a query to Dragon to see if they're interested in publishing something like that. Here's hoping.
It's always a bonus when your food can't fight back... :P
The problem is that the needed feeding on human life force/blood is an evil act in D&D.
Performing an evil act does not necessarily make one evil. Even if you see alignment as a sliding scale that moves further into darkness every time someone does an evil act, and closer to light every time one does a good act, this still allows some room for goodness among the undead. Or is everything unredeemable? When you commit one act of evil, or ten, or a hundred, or some pre-defined number, are you then lost?
Absolutes are hard to enforce. Arguments could be made to define nearly any action as falling nearly anywhere on the continuum between absolute goodness and the most vile evil, given the full understanding of all sides.
Heck, Strahd started off with a romantic ideal that he was willing to pursue beyond the grave, and now? He's just doing what he must to continue his noble quest to bring his beloved to him. Sounds paladin-y to me.
Does this mean there's no room for the "reluctant vampire" in D&D? Of course not! Nobody ever said that even Evil vampires need to be happy with their nature. But if they keep on killing people regardless, no amount of angst and moping about it afterwards can change the fact that, if they were *really* non-Evil, they'd put themselves out of their misery, not just make up excuses for themselves. Non-Chaotic vampires, I'll buy -- indeed, Strahd is one of them IMO; DoD got that one right -- but non-Evil ones? The only one I'd acknowledge is Jander Sunstar, and he *only* refrained from killing himself because he honestly feared he'd come back as something even worse.
I won't beat the Strahd horse into the ground, but I will settle back into the idea that assuming the human (humanoid) standard of morality and judging good and evil strictly from that viewpoint is xenophobic and egotistical (not intending to throw stones; I'm just challenging your thought process).
I didn't look at your nationality, but consider the plight of the Native American. Europeans came to the New World and expanded across it, driving the Native Americans into desolate hiding places under the banner of Manifest Destiny. If you're white, then that was obviously a good course of action: look at the good things wrought by what was created! If you're indigenous, then you can look at a culture devastated by others simply because they were more powerful.
Hey, play your game however you and the other members of your table like; I'm never going to try and force relative morality on anyone. If you want villains - and even heroes - with significantly more depth, though, examining their perspectives and their beliefs is a good place to start.
::edit:: And BTW, Rotipher, good answer on the Grand Conjunction thread.
As for the "cows and carrots" analogy, it's not a valid comparison, as neither one possesses a level of awareness sufficient to conceive of or dwell upon their own deaths, or weigh the moral implications of same. Non-sapient organisms don't hold themselves up to a standard of higher morality, so why would they *expect* humans to be more concerned for their lives than any other organic predator is? The day a cow demonstrates enough of a higher moral sensibility to refrain from eating a carrot, out of concern for the *carrot's* well-being, is the day I'll swear off eating hamburgers.
A vampire, OTOH, used to *be* a human(oid), so has no such grounds to exempt itself from humanoid standards of conduct. It knew what those were when it was alive, and getting bitten to death certainly didn't erase its awareness of moral accountability.
You don't like cows and carrots, eh? Let's go another route, then. A race evolves as the top of the food chain in their environment, but through some defect of the evolutionary process, they lose the ability to produce several key enzymes manufactured by the brain. Specifics and details aside, these humans determine that eating the brains of their nearest animal relatives - monkeys - is necessary to their continued survival. Are said humans guilty of evil because they must feed on these creatures that DO have a clear understanding and fear of the threat and consequence of death?
Don't get caught in this one; it's too easy. It does do a good job of illustrating the point, though.
My net connection went wonky, so there should be more to this post, but there isn't. Maybe next one.
Cultural standards only tell you what "Lawful" is.
So if it's not cultural standards that define good and evil, what is it? Who lays down those lines if not your culture?
That's where the subjectivity in standards should properly be placed, IMO, as the Law/Chaos axis doesn't carry objective moral weight, it only tells whether you adhere to cultural convention -- which can, like the "Manifest Destiny" premise you cite, actually be contrary to genuine Good -- or resist it.
You force me to play Devil's Advocate, but I can do that. The Manifest Destiny theory of American Expansionism WAS good, and while the Native Americans got the short end of that stick, THEY certainly weren't doing anything to make this land into the great, Monroe Doctrine-enforcing, United Nations-enabling voice of freedom that it is today.
A person who is Lawful might do things that are moral or immoral, *believing* their deeds are "right" simply because it's what culture and custom endorses; a person who's Chaotic might act out against tradition in ways that are destructive or constructive, depending on whether the practices they're rebelling against are benevolent or not.
The question and the point behind it remain the same, though, and the culture and laws and morality of modern Western thought have addressed it: It's why we have the various insanity pleas in place in our legal system. A person might do absolutely ANYTHING, *believing" their deeds are "right," and the consideration of whether that person believes or understands the rightness or wrongness of those actions DOES weigh into the consideration of whether their actions are to be deemed, in the eyes of the law and of society, as wrong or not. Those laws didn't come about because they were an intrinsic subset of law itself; they came about as changes to law, mandated by the forces of morality. Benevolence or malevolence, again, are in the eye of the beholder.
So *that's* where depth and ambiguity and moral dilemmas should really arise from in D&D, IMO: not from a mere lack of objective Good or Evil, but from mortals' distorted, imperfect understanding of what those objective standards are.
So, in this, are we saying that the concepts of Good and Evil are maintained in some cosmic database somewhere, and it's already been determined whether it's a Good or Evil act for the paladin to destroy the kobolds, hold the life of one last baby kobold in her hand, and either twist the little bugger's head off in anticipation of the evil that it might one day do, or attempt to raise it in a good evironment, hoping it can break the inbred cycle of violence and being responsible for it if it can't?
As for the "cows and carrots" analogy, it's not a valid comparison, as neither one possesses a level of awareness sufficient to conceive of or dwell upon their own deaths, or weigh the moral implications of same. Non-sapient organisms don't hold themselves up to a standard of higher morality, so why would they *expect* humans to be more concerned for their lives than any other organic predator is? The day a cow demonstrates enough of a higher moral sensibility to refrain from eating a carrot, out of concern for the *carrot's* well-being, is the day I'll swear off eating hamburgers.
As an admitted hamburger eater, are you now admitting the moral superiority of vegetarians, who have already sworn off eating hamburgers?
A vampire, OTOH, used to *be* a human(oid), so has no such grounds to exempt itself from humanoid standards of conduct. It knew what those were when it was alive, and getting bitten to death certainly didn't erase its awareness of moral accountability.
And, for the coup de grace (or not), I will repeat your own phrase back to you:
"A vampire, OTOH, *used* to be a human(oid)." Why should a humanoid's standards of conduct remaining binding to him, since he has risen above those same constraints? Furhter, if "getting bitten to death certainly didn't erase its awareness of moral accountability," then you have justified the vampire's choice in deciding on his own morality and thus, the possibility that he can just as easily choose to remain good.
So if it's not cultural standards that define good and evil, what is it? Who lays down those lines if not your culture?
Remind me what genre we're talking about again?
Remind me what genre we're talking about again?
In this case, I think that's a really important question. We're not only talking about fantasy, and not even just about gothic horror fantasy, but about Ravenloft, a campaign setting in which there are active, seemingly sentient puppetmasters behind everything, and those puppetmasters seem to have an incredible sense of the ironic.
Like I said before, it's not my place to try and shove subjective morality onto anyone else's gaming table. I like, as both a DM and as a player, to be challenged by hard moral choices in my games. Not everyone does; many people want to simply smash kobolds, then orcs, then kuo-toa, then ettercaps, eventually vampires, and so on until they get the cool Epic items, ascend the godhead, and retire the PCs as undisputed masters of all reality. There's nothing wrong with their game or mine.
In my games, the choice between attacking the monsters and getting to know them is not easy to make. There may be a town of humans that fear the broken ones that gather outside town and want them destroyed, and the PCs may go and launch an offensive against them. If they do so without talking to the B1s, though, they might further victimize an already-oppressed and terrified colony of innocents and, thereby, commit acts of evil themselves. Maybe fostering some understanding between the two peoples would be more productive for everyone.
Is everyone sick of me yet? I apologize; I was off yesterday and the topic at hand is one of my favorites. Plus, Mr. Mangrum has always been a favorite, both in products and on these boards, so how could I NOT address the question?
Ravenloft is, in its essence, a Gothic game-setting. While you may not prefer to play it as such, "Gothic" implies that there *are* such things as "evil acts", which incur retribution on those who engage in them -- no matter what excuses they make for themselves -- or even on their successors if some kind of restitution isn't made. Whether the game-setting's Dark Power-imposed standards for what actually *constitutes* "Evil" are ones that we DMs would accept IRL isn't really the point: part of the appeal of the Ravenloft setting is that, unlike a hack-and-slash setting or a more lightweight "popcorn game" world (**ahem Toril cough cough**), PCs need to consider the moral implications of their actions, not just their practical efficacy. Living up to a high standard of moral conduct -- even higher, perhaps, than they would or could abide by IRL -- is as much a challenge for the players as winning a battle or outsmarting an adversary. It's hard to see how you can preserve that element of moral challenge, IYC, if you've already openly proclaimed that morality is whatever the heck people -- including the PCs -- happen to *say* it is.
"A vampire, OTOH, *used* to be a human(oid)." Why should a humanoid's standards of conduct remaining binding to him, since he has risen above those same constraints? Furhter, if "getting bitten to death certainly didn't erase its awareness of moral accountability," then you have justified the vampire's choice in deciding on his own morality and thus, the possibility that he can just as easily choose to remain good.
There IS no such thing as "humanoid" standards of conduct. There's only ONE standard of conduct for sentient beings -- sentient, as in "capable of knowing some things are right and some are wrong" -- and being a vampire, a kobold, a celestial or a mind flayer doesn't exempt one from that basic standard, that you MUST respect others' rights if you claim those rights for yourself. Choose to kill other sentients, and you're refuting the notion that you, yourself, have any more right to live than you thought your victims did; cause pain to other sentients, and you're as much as denying that it's wrong for others to cause pain to you. What you ARE doesn't change that, it only makes you a hypocrite to claim you've any more right to live and be happy than the ones you've willfully harmed.
An adult human used to be a baby. One might argue that the adult "rose above" the limits of being a baby, upon growing up, yet that doesn't mean the adult can declare that since he or she isn't a baby anymore, he or she is entitled to eat babies. Mere increased power, whether attained by maturation or undeath, doesn't make you LESS obligated to adhere to moral conduct; if anything, it increases that obligation.
A new-made vampire certainly CAN choose to remain Good. Erasmus Van Richten did exactly that ... and, knowing that adhering to morality required that he prevent his vampiric appetites from harming others, immediately asked his father to destroy him. There's the "Good-aligned vampire" you've been looking for.
What if a vampire chose not to kill its source of nourishment?
Is feeding on sentient beings an evil act in and by itself?
There are enough people out there that would let the vampire feed on them, so there is no victim involved whatsoever.
In a Gothic (Black/White) campaign the above vampire doesn't quite fit. But in a Gothic fantasy campaign (Ravenloft), I don't know why the odd vampire wouldn't fit. A victim of circumstance, rejected by a hateful society, struggling with both its now undead nature and preservation of its Self, a forbidden romance between it and its source of "life"...it'd make for one tragic character. And isn't that an aspect that Ravenloft preaches?
If you want to make it fit, then you can make it fit. If you want to make it not fit, then you can make it not fit. This thread is becoming a good source for either decision. And here's to that.
This thread is becoming a good source for either decision. And here's to that.
Absolutely. Raise a glass to intelligent discussion (
), rather than `net-standard flame wars(
). Thanks, Rotipher, Ghost, Mr. Mangrum.