Setting Design: Dracula

[Username17]

Saying that it means the same thing vs. vampires despite being a symbol of something entirely different with nothing in common is bizzare.

"See, this lower case t is sort of like a cross, so a t surrounded by a circle will repel vampires!"

Apparently, you're too pig headed to understand how thoroughly you got pwned by the swastika example. The first one is Buddha. The second one is some white trash neo-nazi chick. They have the same symbols on their chest and back. To Buddha, it represents the cycle of life, the radiance of the sun, and the interconnectedness and balance of all things. To our crazy neo-viking bitch, it represents her abiding hatred of homosexuals and jews.

Nevertheless, its effect on other people seeing it for the first time is not different. If you take the Buddha and show it to a sheltered Israeli kid they will be super offended, and if the nazi chick is shown to a sheltered Burmese kid they'll assume that she's a very pious nun. Only after lengthy explanation will both children be able to understand that one of those is a symbol of peace and the other is a symbol of war. Despite being exactly the same fucking symbol.

And these symbols won't always appear in context. Take that swastika off the torso of our resident peace guru or hate harridan, and what have you got? You've just got a naked swastika. Make it out of copper and put it on a table. What is it? War or Peace? Harmony or Discord?

If you have a lower case t with a circle around it, is that crucifix? A sufficiently devout christian could say yes. A hindu would probably not. If it's made out of copper or gold, and sitting in the middle of the table, can Dracula pick it up? Whose piety would decide that? The last person to touch it? The closest onlooker? The onlooker whose faith is largest in that particular object? What?

It's not a workable system, because the gran circle is on the fucking ground. It works even if no one is in the room. True faith as a mechanic can only model people making protection circles around themselves. It can't handle fire and forget wards - which specifically exist in the setting.

-Username17

[Prak]

So really we might as well use the truth faith model, is what you're saying. Because otherwise... your system, where random assortments of lines and circles have metaphysical power over evil, is absurd.

No. The True Faith model is fucking retarded. The model where there are specific symbols that actually do things that you can actually discover and test is one where you can "learn" magic. That's key. Because otherwise you're just playing pretty princess dressup. "My character is the most faithful of all the unicorn princesses!"

No, you're not. You're playing "I have a strong fucking will so I can actualy influence the world, you know, the way magic is supposed to work?"

Fuck that. And fuck you for suggesting it.

and fuck you for saying that vampires should be destroyed by math.

A game in which the only thing that matters is not what you do but what you are in what is I might add a completely unmeasurable quantity: your "personal awesomeness." Not strength, speed, intelligence, height, or even beauty. No, just how much you believe what you say you believe. What the fuck is that?

Ok Frank, I think I need to remind you of something here:
1: I'm a Satanist. Satanic magic is the exercising of one's will over the universe using Hell, Demons and the sigil of Baphomet, along with whatever the fuck else helps you focus your will as Focii for said force and personal energy, which itself is released through indulging oneself in unabashed emotion.
2: A lot of people who have some form of belief will tend to have their projects and views coloured by said belief, so my satanic view point colours one the other important things in my life, gaming.

I'm using the idea of Faith as a focus for a character's willpower. If we're talking storyteller system, then what should really happen is a character with True Faith should roll Wits+Willpower or something to be able to get the standard benefits attributed to crosses with whatever is appropriate to their view point. If we're talking D&D then they roll a will save or something as their turning/smiting/rebuking/whatever check and the holy symbol they use only matters in so far as it's something representative of their beliefs.

I'm saying that the symbol's power is drawn from the character's power and will, not the fact that it happens to have two lines intersecting inside a circle. Seriously, in your model, I can take a day to spray paint a big circle around a perpendicular intersection, Then at night I get the vamp to chase me and I go through the new magic symbol and he drops dead (or whatever.) Your way makes no fucking sense unless you say there is one specific metaphysical truth and it's main symbol has power over undead and a bunch of people just happen to have something similar. You know what RL religion does that? Catholicism.

If magic is learnable, that means that there are actual symbols and actual words that actual have an actual effect on the world if used in the proper circumstances. What you are suggesting is great for self esteem, but fucking worthless for cooperative play.

No, my model has magic as learnable also. What you learn is that magic is the extension of one's will over the world and the tools are the things that focus your mind. Hell, Mage did this. You way says "Okay, these symbols have magic effects because they look like this." To which the average student asks: "Why?" When the teacher replies "Because." or "I don't know, they just do" the student is going to say "Fuck this, a flame thrower works just as well."

If we wanted to play a game where for no measurable reason you were ordained by fate to be much much better and more important than everyone around you, we'd play Exalted. This is about Vampire, where that should not happen.

Oh... so instead we're going to play a game where for no measurable reason two sticks inside a circle were ordained by fate to be much better and more important than any other symbol. You know, instead of my thing where magic depends on your personal strength and will... that makes so much sense Frank!

[Username17]

Oh... so instead we're going to play a game where for no measurable reason two sticks inside a circle were ordained by fate to be much better and more important than any other symbol. You know, instead of my thing were magic depends on your personal strength and will... that makes so much sense Frank!

Actually you have no idea which symbols are the most important, because you don't know what they all do. I would say that the symbol that you can push a vampire around with at very close range is probably ultimately less important than whatever symbol happens to allow Dracula to change the fucking weather.

But yes, it makes much much more sense that there would be objective symbols and incantations that actually do things than if we lived in a relativist universe where no actions or physical objects actually mattered. If I point a gun at you this is more threatening than if I point a carrot at you. This is because a gun is a real object that has real effects, and a carrot is a real object that has real effects. The gun will kill you, the carrot probably won't. You don't make diseases go away with "willpower." You make them go away with actual treatments that actually do things.

What you are asking for isn't cool. It's Toon. It's "surrealist adventures in ranting land." It's very, very dumb. If you had your way, no one could even make a spellcraft check to identify what anyone else was doing, because there would be no methodology for doing anything. Indeed, since anyone can use magic in the setting to transform into a wolf or start a rainstorm, why do we bother having droughts? Why not just will them away with our willpower? Fuck, why even wear clothes? Dracula's baby eating chicks have the magic power to stay OK even when it's freezing and they have nothing but a torn negligee, why don't we all do that all the time? How could any of us ever be surprised by the real properties of the real world if our mere certainty could change those properties?

The real world is at its core real. And if you take that property away from the world in the game, then your game isn't about anything. It's just you talking to hear yourself talk.

Things are. They have properties. Sometimes those properties aren't what you want them to be, and that's tough shit. The world isn't fair, it doesn't conform to your expectations, and you can't always get what you want. Period. End of story. And if your religion tells you otherwise, then your religion is stupid. Just as stupid as Christianity: which assures its followers that they can handle snakes and drink poison because they will never die and Jesus will return within their lifetime to lead them all live into heaven. Christians die. They've been dying and staying dead for nearly two thousand years. The world has real properties. Death is real, and no amount of faith is ever going to change that. And anyone who tells you otherwise is dangerous. And stupid.

-Username17

[Prak]

Frank, I think there's another thing I need to remind you of...

WE'RE TALKING ABOUT A GAME WITH MAGIC!!! Not only that, but we both have a solid grounding in a rules set where, depending on who's holding which, a carrot could very well be more dangerous than a gun. If a fighter's got a gun, and a wizard's got a carrot, the wizard, because of his personal power, skill and knowledge, can probably have a fucking fire ball shot out of the end of that carrot.


Another point is the fact that the idea of true faith comes from White Wolf games, and you know what happens when no one's holding the holy thing in question? Either nothing happens (probably wasn't "blessed") or the effects depend on who has done what to it (holy water will burn a vamp if it was blessed by someone with true faith).

Magic isn't science, Frank, and it's not medicine. You can certainly assume it's going to follow the same style of rules as those things, but I'd love to see what happens to you when you're staring down a tribal shaman and think that because he's making something vaguely related the sign of the cross he's blessing you, when in fact he's sending spirits at you to make you crazier than a homeless schizophrenic on crack and heroin.

In fact, I think the only game system that treats magic like science is D&D, and even then it's not actually said that spells always have the same somatic components, though they do always use the same materials/focii and that would speak volumes, I would think.
(however, I don't know for certain).

Magic takes different forms for different peoples. It's the way it is. Hell, you can't even assume that COLOURS mean the same things to different people. Here in the west black is the colour of death and white is the colour of purity. If you suggested a chinese bride wear white she'd be appalled and offended beyond belief.

Now, granted, sun symbols tend to take on similar shapes because, well, the sun looks the same everywhere, but Dracula wasn't bothered by the sun, so having sun symbols affect him is absurd.

Also, we're not talking about the real world, we're talking about a game world.

If I recall correctly, you're an atheist, correct? Well, good for you, I don't care, but I can at least try to affect things with my will and use symbols that I ascribe power to to help focus said will. What are the possible outcomes of that?
Well, let's say I do a compassion ritual to try to ensure I get a job I just interviewed with, here's what could happen:

• I enforce my will upon the universe and bend it to my desire, getting the job
• I believe that my ritual has worked and whether it does or not I'm more confident, and a little bit of confidence and the accompanying positive thinking going into a second interview can't hurt.
• nothign happens and I've wasted a half hour or so I'd have otherwise spent watching tv or surfing around the internet and have participated in one of my religion's rituals putting me in a more satisfied frame of mind.

I'm not saying a ritual would work, but, ultimately, what harm have I done? So what if magic's not real? The Hindi gods aren't either but that's not to say the hallucinations experience by Brahman that have done animeta muscaria have done themselves much harm... rather they've, at least, participated in the fulfilling of a great need of early man, creating something greater than oneself to rely upon for guidance and comfort.

I just admit that my imaginary friends could well be imaginary.

[Username17]

Congratulations, you just Pascalled this discussion. Pascal's Wager Advanced, by the way: is that if the supernatural is real, there is n unlimited number of possible potential sets of supernatural rules. Praying to one god my well anger another god that happens to be more important and performing a magic ritual could just as easily allow demons to come in and molest you as whatever its intended function was.

Pascal's Wager isn't a weighted coin flip with vast rewards on one end and nothing lost on the other. It's spending actual effort for whatever chance of being allowed the privilege of Drunk Walking. Even if successful, any supernatural invocation is just as likely to be harmful as helpful, since you have no idea what rules, if any, exist.

But that's neither here nor there. This discussion is about putting Dracula (the book) onto paper. And in Dracula people are able to bring stuff into the room and leave it there while they go off and do other things and have that have genuine supernatural effects. Actual things do actual things in that book. Since no angel ever comes in and gives exposition as to why these things work, that's open to interpretation. But that specific things do specific things is not. The rules apply to people who don't believe in them and they apply to people who don't know about them.

And any discussion of any Mage: The Ascension-style bullshit is therefore off topic for this thread. Because this is about an actual book in which actual objects have actual effects. Not a deeply personal exploration of the strength of will and subjectivity of experience.

-Username17

[Prak]

I actually had to think for a second what the fuck Pascal's Wager was... my Philosophy of Religion teacher would be so proud...[/sarcasm]

anyway, you're right. However, Mage was, somewhat, on topic, in that our opinion of a way of doing something was asked, and my opinion came from WoD, and my way of doing things is the basic conceit of Mage's magic system.

However, yes, in Dracula, you can leave a cross on a table and Dracula can't touch it. That is, however, because it's a Cross, rather than a pair of perpendicularly intersecting sticks, which has, presumably, been blessed by a priest. Same for the communion wafers. The objects are anathema to Dracula because a man of Faith blessed them, savvy?

In Dracula, (I now need to admit I haven't read the book, merely seen both the Tod Browning w/ Bela Lugosi and Francos Ford Coppola w/ Gary Oldman movies) Count Dracula goes off to battle. He's late coming home and at some point his wife throws herself off a cliff, killing herself. Dracula comes home and learns this. Instead of taking a page from some Verona-born pretty boy's book and committing suicide himself, he curses god and thrusts his sword through a crucifix, or possibly a cross, not sure. God in turn says "Well fuck you, too" and Dracula is now a cursed wretch who is harmed by holy symbols and can turn into a wolfman to have rough sex in a garden. (Can you tell I preferred the Coppola/Oldman version?). If we're basing things off of the Coppola flick than crosses work because they are God's chosen symbol and some faithful man blessed them.

We could go with the more recent Van Helsing version of Dracula and then crosses don't do much except burn when Dracula touches them, because Dracula is the Big Bad Evil Badass. Holy water harms his brides, but I don't think it harm him too much.

It's worth pointing out that if we're basing this on source material, there's little to no reason why your model should work Frank. Crosses are powered with God's mojo, and Dracula uses Satan's mojo to change the weather.

[tzor]

I would like to take the "cross" question and literally invert it for a moment. The idea is not that the "cross" has power over Dracula, but that for some reason (buried deep within his back-story) he has this irrational fear of crosses which like any other irrational fear makes him freak out. (And technically his fear should be of an orthodox cross but that's a minor nit pick.)

While faith and divinity can be one idea, angst, fear and paranoia can be equally effective.

[Psychic Robot]

Crosses are powered with God's mojo, and Dracula uses Satan's mojo to change the weather.

I lol'd.

[violence in the media]

Why can't magic seriously be like cooking? Where anyone who follows the recipe properly winds up with an omlette?

[Elennsar]

VitM: Because if you gave me a cookbook, the ingredients for an omlette, and waited for me to make breakfast, you'd be better off ordering take out.

The same is NOT true for say, my mother, given the stuff.

Not because my mother is inherently more awesome, but because I don't have the knowledge to be able to functionally use the recipe and produce a good result.

Tzor: There's one problem with that. There are vampires here (presumably) that don't give a shit about crosses any more than I do.

Or any other religious symbols. So unless somehow being a cross or whatever has power regardless of what the individual vampire thinks (or all vampires are infected with the same deeply buried fears/hates, which may or may not be a good thing), that wouldn't work.

Shame, because that neatly handles any symbol the vampire -thinks- is scary works, and different vampires would have different ideas.

Just not the fact that there's no reason for most vampires to share Dracula's problem with crosses (Orthodox -or- Catholic) if its just his mental issues.

[violence in the media]

VitM: Because if you gave me a cookbook, the ingredients for an omlette, and waited for me to make breakfast, you'd be better off ordering take out.

The same is NOT true for say, my mother, given the stuff.

Not because my mother is inherently more awesome, but because I don't have the knowledge to be able to functionally use the recipe and produce a good result.

Provided you have some form of rudimentary intelligence and capacity to follow directions, the omlette will eventually get made. It might not be the best omlette in the world and it might have taken you far longer to make than normal, but at that point you're getting into questions of quality and speed. That is what you can use your cooking skill test to determine.

For Dracula, you almost want magic rituals to be like equipment. One hunter picks up his rifle and bowie knife, and the other grabs his notebook that shows you how to raw a magic seal, bless holy water, and put a bite victim into stasis. If the need arises, bowie knife guy can read the same rituals out of notebook guy's book.

Rituals should be able to be taught and learned in-game without the expenditures of character resources or waiting for some "level-up" moment.

[virgil]

In regards to personal belief powering crosses, I've seen one setting where it was done, the Dresden Files. The only reason symbols have power in that universe is because someone with power actually charged it with energy. A cross on a table does nothing unless the pious priest actually touches and invest energy into it first.

Now, in that universe, there are specific power sources you can tap if you believe in them. The people who can invest energy into random symbols are born with the power and are called wizards. The people who can channel God's energy can only do it because they specifically believe in God and live clean lives; and there's no Ascetic Bunny for a crazy man to believe in for power to channel out of him.

There's more to the above, but that's how you can get faith to actually work. You're either imbued with the power to have your emotions alter reality (who have their own, simple, rules), or you deeply believe in an established power source that's willing to help you.

I don't want proof of God's existence in my setting, and I want the setting to be more about the vampires and hunters than the sorcery. Therefore, shape matters and context doesn't.

[Elennsar]

Provided you have some form of rudimentary intelligence and capacity to follow directions, the omlette will eventually get made. It might not be the best omlette in the world and it might have taken you far longer to make than normal, but at that point you're getting into questions of quality and speed. That is what you can use your cooking skill test to determine.

Eventually? Yes. Its the fact it won't be a very good omlette that's the problem. And my cooking skill is poor enough that I might fail (or have such a miserable success its not good enough).

I don't want proof of God's existence in my setting, and I want the setting to be more about the vampires and hunters than the sorcery. Therefore, shape matters and context doesn't.

::draws a (lower case) T on a soap can lid. Holds it in front of a vampire.::

"BEGONE!"

Now, admitedly, my character won't know that will work, but it kind of disrupts my ability to take it seriously (as distinctly from comically) to imagine that it can.

[violence in the media]

Provided you have some form of rudimentary intelligence and capacity to follow directions, the omlette will eventually get made. It might not be the best omlette in the world and it might have taken you far longer to make than normal, but at that point you're getting into questions of quality and speed. That is what you can use your cooking skill test to determine.

Eventually? Yes. Its the fact it won't be a very good omlette that's the problem. And my cooking skill is poor enough that I might fail (or have such a miserable success its not good enough).

And the point is that you can try it. If it's powered by your own faith or phlebtonium, then you have a situation where certain characters cannot even attempt a magic ritual.

Think of D&D. A wizard can pick up and use a longsword, despite how poorly he might manage with it. A fighter cannot pick up and use a spellbook, no matter what. That is the sort of situation you want to avoid in Dracula. The wafer ritual works for anyone who knows how to perform it. Indeed, it even benefits people who are unaware of it's purpose, practice, or presence.

[Elennsar]

So instead of magic rituals in which it actually matters whether its a t or a cross, because while it may look the same it isn't, we have refridgerator magnet lower case Ts almost good enough to be capable of magic?

Personally, I prefer the idea that a cross (or whatever) can work because the cross is magical whether or not you are.

But not the idea that my soup can lid is able to repel vampires.

Faith: You are crazy enough to believe your religion means something. Unfortunately you're mistaken. You probably believe in things like kosher cuisine and will starve before breaking those rules. Sucker.

Very appealing, that. Makes me want to play someone with it already.

[Username17]

No. Two symbols that look the same are the same. A symbol is just a shape. If something has the same shape, it is the same symbol.

This is the letter A:

A

If it was written down by someone from over here in central europe, they probably call this symbol "Ah" or "Eh." If was written down by someone from North America, they probably call it "Ey." But regardless of what it's called, regardless of what sentence it may or may not be used in, it's still the same symbol. It's two diagonal lines meeting at the top, crossed by a horizontal line. It has power. It has the power to by itself signify a singular indefinite article to English speakers. To speakers of Czech, it can by itself conjoin two thoughts, actions, or nouns.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

So the only reason the cross has power is that we think it has power.

It has nothing to do with whether there is a property of the cross other than being shaped like this t...its purely visual.

So if I believed that crosses made me stronger (as a vampire), would they?

If its just because I (as a hunter) believe they do, then what if the vampire believes they're just badly drawn Ts?

[baduin]

No. Two symbols that look the same are the same. A symbol is just a shape. If something has the same shape, it is the same symbol...

Unfortunately, not. A symbol is a shape/sound/etc which is expressing some thought. The same shape can express different thoughts, or no thought at all, if it happens accidentally, and in that case it isn't a symbol at all.

Cf. the distinction between signifier and signified.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html

[Orion]

Look, unless you want to go the full out Mage route, you need a set of magical physics *anyway*

Someone asked upthread, "why can't we just assume Christianity is true?" The answer is that Christianity is the name of a huge tangled up mess of disparate beliefs and traditions. Under many versions of Christianity vampires shouldn't even exist. Among those who would acknowledge vampires, opinions on how to deal with them would vary. You'd have to pick a specific sect, even specific congregation's interpretation of christianity, and then you have magical physics anyway. Introducing faith at that point seems unnecessary.

[Elennsar]

You could, however, say that "looks like the same thing" doesn't mean anything in regards to the meaning and power and usefulness of the symbol any more than my "r"s looking rather like "Y"s.

The idea that because I have sloppy handwritting I am writing different words is kind of funny, but not something that makes sense unless there is no substance beside the image.

[Username17]

If a symbol has actual, rather than symbolic power, then the shape is that symbol whether you will it so or not. As soon as you give a symbol magic power above and beyond the power that some people in the world are already set to interpret it in one way or another, that becomes necessarily true.

If you inscribe two triangles oppositely inside a circle, the vast majority of people will respond to that as a symbol of Judaism. Whether you will it so or not, this will be the case. Indeed, once you put a character to paper you have done everything in your power to influence others' interpretation. And yet still if you put down a Buddhist unity spiral, people in Europe will be super offended.

Same with writing down an actually magic symbol. If the symbol does something real, then this is akin to the universe itself interpreting your characters as it sees fit. Not with meaning, but with demonstrable effect. Rather than being offended at your Swastika, the universe is creating a region in which a werewolf cannot tell a lie.

There are only two things you can do to the whole symbol relationship to makes things different enough that you'd call them magic. You can either shift the relationship such that the intention behind drawing a character matters (normally it does not), or you can make it so that the character drawn has intrinsic meaning (normally it does not). The first one is frankly masturbatory, and the second one models the way magic seems to work in the cited book rather well.

-Username17

[virgil]

I'm also not at all interested in games where you can legitimately have arguments of semantics, to add yet another reason why I want the symbols themselves to have intrinsic power.

Onto something actually productive, rather than having it derail into pages and pages of back-and-forth disagreement like Elennsar's healing thread.

What is a good 19th century Gothic Horror book to include in the setting as a supplement to Stoker's Dracula, ideally in a manner that can accommodate more than one faith in implementation like we've done with vampirism?

[Prak]

I don't know about 19th century Gothic Horror, but there is the 17th Century (set) dark pulp stories of Solomon Kane. Kind of a non-magic using Puritan Paladin who went around trouble shooting supernatural beasties.

If I recall correctly, it dealt with a number of different cultures having magic, and I think there were a few "miracles" that happened for Solomon's benefit.

here's the wiki on it

[TavishArtair]

You could always read the original vampire book (yes, more original than the original). "The Vampyre" by John William Polidori. There is, of course, also Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", if you are merely looking for atmosphere.

[Username17]

Frankenstein is a absolute must. The genre is really defined by Varney the Vampire. You'll also want to throw in a bunch of works of Poe. Like, really pretty much any of them. Also of note is The Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyll, Dorian Gray, heck you could even throw in Hastur - since it's contemporaneous.

-Username17