Setting Design: Dracula

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 3:43 pm

virgileso wrote:There's a question, why is faith such a popular concept here? Frank's practically the first one to openly suggest the option of not using the faith option.

As weird as that may sound, I think a good part of it's Atheists' courtesy - we don't want Christianity to get off any better than other religions. Though "he, in particular, was cursed by a single faith" works (including "more faithful to source", indeed), unlike "there's only 1 true faith". But as for the Disney effect, see Lago's post above - exists anyway.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 3:46 pm

Because it lets you use the holy stuff. In Dracula (which I read for senior year for high school. It's been four years, so my memory might be fuzzy), they break up communion wafers to put around a doorframe to stop Lucy/The Bloofer Lady, with some effect. It's already been said that any holy-symbols-repel-bloodsuckers will *not* be explained in such a way that it confirms any religious belief. The next-easiest explanation is that it's the individual who makes it work--through faith.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 4:07 pm

virgileso wrote:There's a question, why is faith such a popular concept here? Frank's practically the first one to openly suggest the option of not using the faith option.

Vampire stories that don't involve bullshit like Castlevania or Hellsing (the Mary Sue anime) invariably involve a core element of mystery to them. That is, you find what's menacing society, why it's doing this, and how do you stop it.

Things like 'vampires don't cast a reflection in metallic mirrors' or 'vampires can turn into bats' are real and quantifiable rules in the story. We know how mirrors work and we know how bats work. We know that if we see Dracula turn into a bat and fly off, the next time we can bring a high frequency sound emitter to stun him before he escapes next time. So on. We also know that if we're in Victorian England that won't work and the heroes have to come up with another way to prevent Dracula from escaping.

Something like 'if you believe hard enough, you repel the vampire!' just kills the logic of the story. There's no way anyone can quantify 'if you believe hard enough', since it's completely personal and subjective. It allows the author to pull anything out of their ass to advance a core element of the plot in whatever direction that they want to without being accountable for it.

And that's just unacceptable in a story that's about real world people using logic and science to fight creatures stronger than unprepared humans.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 4:14 pm

Maxus wrote:The next-easiest explanation is that it's the individual who makes it work--through faith.

See, that's completely unworkable.

The holy wafer rule would be fine if it was established that it only works when someone of Deacon rank or higher ordained by the Catholic Church blesses them with a prayer in Pslams 3:8 or some shit. That's fine.

The holy wafer rule would not be fine if it was established because it only works because the priest laying down the crackers really, really believed that it will work Wile E. Coyote style.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 6:29 pm

To answer why we are favoring faith, I have two answers, pick the more palatable:

1) Because badass priests (or lay zealots) kicking the shit out of vampires with the power of God* is a lot cooler than eating lots of garlic bread before going hunting.

2) Because the power of God* is a lot more believable than than the Power of Whatever The Fuck You Can Think Of.

As for personal issues: I have my personal issues as my personal view of the world. I am influenced by the texts I choose to take seriously.

I don't have any obligation to take the Bible as such a text. Van Helsing does.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 7:05 pm

Now, see, that actually doesn't answer much of anything. Faith is not a term for 'power of God' (real or perceived).

Well, it's looking like I'm going to have magic available in my setting, and Dracula's the result of a very specific curse that went a 'little' out of hand. So as to minimize its world-wide presence, I'll make spellcasters limited to blessings/curses; with weather/transformation magic available to the exceptionally powerful/trained, but even they can't perform such without accepting limitations on the magic or themselves.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 7:13 pm

No, but if say communion wafers work as warding devices or throwing stars, its still an edge that the guys who have access to those get, which I for instance don't.

I don't know how to bless communion wafers, Father Robert does.

So either it is more believable that he has an advantage over me when it comes up, or it is just a cooler image and has nothing to do with the fact it "should" work a given way in terms of the setting.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 8:34 pm

If you want to keep things from degenerating into stupid, you'll want to not have the game center around arbitrary curses. Because then the entire game just dissolves into Mastermind (No. That time I was totally thinking of 'fondant' when I wrote up this specific vampire's curse. Roll up new characters).

It's a game. Games have rules. Certainly the source material is incredibly rule bound. And when you're making the game, you'll want to make rules. Rules that will be followed, so that actions in the game and results in the story are related in a manner which appears fair.

And frankly, this means writing up all the crazy bullshit that works and doesn't work right at the beginning. You can't cover all the religions, because even small and archaic religions like Christianity are just crazy crazy long. You can't cover all the folk tales, the Encyclopedia of Vampires is over nine hundred pages.

In the setting in the book there are arbitrary ritual magics that "work." Some of these are known, and some are unknown. And that's kind of the point. Indeed, at no point in the entire story is there any character who knows how all of the magic tricks performed by all the other characters were done.

So what you'd want to do is to write up a whole bunch of available magic rituals that have very input/output type effects. And for flavor you're going to want a bunch of those rituals to match up to religious rituals from various world religions. After all, it's not really surprising if an organization like a church were to incorporate some actually effective rituals into the litanies. Religious devotions evolve over time, after all, and it would be kind of surprising if there wasn't a selective pressure to keep rituals that had demonstrable effects on the lists - even if those demonstrable effects were only visible in weird circumstances like "You're in hand to hand combat with a vampire." The pope recently clarified that in the hierarchy of sins, blaspheming the eucharist cracker is literally a more heinous act than genocide - a frankly odd stance to take unless you posit some kind of international vampire hunting conspiracy where eucharist crackers actually do something.

But while you're at it, you actually are going to want supernatural enemies who aren't vampires. The setting explicitly has gypsy sorcerers and hypnotists and such in it, it wouldn't be at all out of place to have werewolves and prometheans and shit as well. Essentially, it sounds like what you want is World of Darkness scaled back down to a 3, with al the stupid pulled out, and with most of the 80s pop culture references replaced with a greater adherence to the scripts from the 19th century Gothic novels.

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 9:07 pm

Why is everyone so allergic to Christianity? Can't you just pretend that it more-or-less just works? It's a God damn' game you're talking about, no some universal profession of belief.

Eucharist wafers and crucifices work because Dracula can't stand the touch of Jesus.

koz · Post by **koz** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 9:21 pm

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Why is everyone so allergic to Christianity? Can't you just pretend that it more-or-less just works? It's a God damn' game you're talking about, no some universal profession of belief.

Eucharist wafers and crucifices work because Dracula can't stand the touch of Jesus.

I'm allergic to treating Christianity this way in a game without giving holy men/priests of other religions powers over vampires. Because otherwise, Christianity is superior in all respects to other religions, and this is STUPID.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:07 pm

What gypsy sorcery was there in Stoker's Dracula?

I guess there would be silliness as bad as 'whatever you have faith in' if I just did the arbitrary curse thing.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:39 pm

Mister_Sinister wrote:
CatharzGodfoot wrote:Why is everyone so allergic to Christianity? Can't you just pretend that it more-or-less just works? It's a God damn' game you're talking about, no some universal profession of belief.

Eucharist wafers and crucifices work because Dracula can't stand the touch of Jesus.
I'm allergic to treating Christianity this way in a game without giving holy men/priests of other religions powers over vampires. Because otherwise, Christianity is superior in all respects to other religions, and this is STUPID.

Yeah, in Dracula universe Christianity is superior in all respects to other religions. Why is this a problem? It seems more likely that the stupid lies in your inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 10:53 pm

Yeah, in Dracula universe Christianity is superior in all respects to other religions.

It's not though. The garlic thing is Egyptian theology in action.

The protagonist characters in the book don't know any Muslim or Buddhist rituals, but there's no indication that they wouldn't work. Dracula himself has access to a bunch of Muslims and Gypsies and he knows rituals that will change the fucking weather.

-Username17

baduin · Post by **baduin** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:07 am

It is a fact that Dracula was based very much on European legends, and Europe was and is very much a Christian, or post-Christian, continent.

It does not mean that either the book or the legends are in any way orthodox. But the conceptual basis of the legend was very much Christianity, plus earlier Slavic folk legends. You can base your system on those beliefs, or you can select some other folklore, or you can invent your own system. The only thing that is not possible is to have all folklores be valid at the same time.

That is - it is possible, but as the result your game will resemble Cabell's Jurgen, not Dracula.

It is a very fine book, of course, but not very horrific.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CABELL/title.htm
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CABELL/ch37.htm

"So again Coth parted with his son in anger, and Jurgen returned again toward Barathum; and, whether or not it was a coincidence, Jurgen met precisely the vampire of whom he had inveigled his father into thinking. She was the most seductively beautiful creature that it would be possible for Jurgen's father or any other man to imagine: and her clothes were orange-coloured, for a reason sufficiently well known in Hell , and were embroidered everywhere with green fig-leaves."

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:24 am

That would technically give the option of 'whatever holy symbol works', but not bother with faith or membership. Thus you have menorahs and malas repelling vampires as well as crosses and garlic.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 1:18 am

I'm tempted to have well symbols not necessarily repel vampires, but be something they refuse to touch. Thus, they can still be in the same room as a cross (hence Dracula's stay in an abbey). Wielding it as a weapon protects you because they're not going to risk accidentally touching it.

From what I recall, communion wafers didn't influence Dracula and friends except when used to make a circle that they wouldn't cross; almost like a mini-threshold generator.

Hmm...

Vampires have a refusal to touch major symbols of faith that remain intact enough to be recognizable as such (thus pizza won't repel), crucifixes, hamsas, malas, garlic. Faith is not a prerequisite for their use (began use in religions because they work so well against vampires), though personal morality creates preferences.

Follow up by inability to cross a threshold without permission, but once it is obtained by any within, total freedom is gained. Businesses, churches, and other areas otherwise open to the public inherently give permission by their nature and thus the vampire is allowed egress.

Temporary thresholds can be created through use of communion wafers blessed by a Deacon-level priest or higher, or pieces of a mala that has been used for 108 repetitions.

In both cases, a vampire cannot overcome a threshold through direct action. However, this does not prevent indirect removal of the barrier (set off the fire alarm to let the sprinklers wash away the crackers) or attempting to mesmerize someone within to grant permission.

Unable to willingly cross over uncovered running water, such as the sea or the river, except during high/low tide. This does allow movement aboard a ship once aboard, as well as departure once it's docked or landed.

Mirrors & photographs both will not pick up a vampire.

Between sunrise and sunset, they are reduced to mortals (except temporarily at noon), although they do not revert to their base state when daybreak occurs. Instead, they are 'stuck' in whatever form they were in at the time.

Virgin blood is their food (any blood?) and healing balm. Sleeping atop their native soil postpones the weakness they suffer without it, unless their soil is 'spoiled' with items they cannot touch or with their own thresholds (such as wafers); although disposing the dirt works just as well.

Bigode · Post by **Bigode** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:51 am

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Why is everyone so allergic to Christianity? Can't you just pretend that it more-or-less just works? It's a God damn' game you're talking about, no some universal profession of belief.

Eucharist wafers and crucifices work because Dracula can't stand the touch of Jesus.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Yeah, in Dracula universe Christianity is superior in all respects to other religions. Why is this a problem? It seems more likely that the stupid lies in your inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.

What Sinister said, what Frank said (I didn't know garlic's Egyptian, but it's obvious there's at least 1 faith other than Christianity involved: old Slavic; maybe Islam as well, given the context?), plus 2 things in my case at least: a) some other players have problems with in-game faith (see Book of Exalted Furries) and b) I've no problem with stuff that offends me morally in-game because it's not real, but I do have problems with stuff that offends me intelectually, since I don't seem to turn my brain off while playing (not Christianity so much as Catholicism specifically though, but the distinction between them wasn't even worth mentioning at that time).

BTW, it's not said (well, AFAIR) any other religion fails to work. Tell me which's your argument:

- despite millenia of vampire legends in all the world, it comes true only in Europe; or
- all other peoples are either governed by vampires or whoever supernatural that keeps the former in check, since other places' faiths are no help?

---

But anyway, that's just talking about how things could be - since Frank/Virgil's plan seems best (as usual) and already being worked on by Virgil.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 9:51 am

Elennsar wrote:I don't know how to bless communion wafers, Father Robert does.

The funny thing is, I can get that advantage also. I am a satanist, but I was confirmed in the catholic church and while I cannot remember the exact thing said in the blessing of the wafers, I could get my hands on a missalette and bless wafers, because I am a confirmed catholic and "Once a catholic, always a catholic." Usually only a priest can bless wafers, but, in dire straights, any catholic could do it.

Does this explain why I prefer the true faith angle? I honestly don't know if that's the reason, but it might explain it.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Why is everyone so allergic to Christianity? Can't you just pretend that it more-or-less just works? It's a God damn' game you're talking about, no some universal profession of belief.

Eucharist wafers and crucifices work because Dracula can't stand the touch of Jesus.

Because I don't like it? because I like using religions in my games that I could actually see myself being a part of? Because in my mind, in my opinion, christianity is one of the stupidest religions ever? Because I like the idea that a person's will is what fends off the bloodsucking fiend, not some impersonal jackass that thinks you should do everything his way? Because I think the image of the christian, the jew, the muslim and the satanist fighting off vampires with their indiviual beliefs to equal effect is a cooler image than the Christian standing there fending off Dracula by himself while the other three stand back and can't do anything? Have I presented enough possibilities?

(although, I am not adverse to the christian using the "Power of Badass" to fight vampires, ala the ex-holy man in From Dusk Till Dawn fighting off vampires with a cross formed by a baseball bat and a shotgun....)

koz · Post by **koz** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 11:52 am

CatharzGodfoot wrote: Yeah, in Dracula universe Christianity is superior in all respects to other religions. Why is this a problem? It seems more likely that the stupid lies in your inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.

Bigode gave the reasons before I could, but essentially, if one religion is superior to all others in any setting based on the modern world, you are either an evangelical Christian or smoking something strong, because it DOES. NOT. WORK.

Having all other faiths be meaningless in front of the supernatural is basically forcing character concepts down the throats of your PCs, which is something I don't approve of to begin with, and to make matters worse, even if it is just a game, you are basically telling people that 'being any other religion is not worth anything, because only XXX matters when it comes down to crunch time'. This is highly biased, stupid and not something I would want to play for any reason whatsoever.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 12:58 pm

The problem is, if anything from Wicca to Zen to Jehovah's witnesses ::makes the sign of the aquilia.:: to...well, that brings up the problem right fucking there.

Saying that "God by any other name smells as funny, and vampires are afraid of funny smelling stuff." works.

However, if me getting the aquilia pendant I intend to buy at some point and holding it in Dracula's face works, I'm going to throw pencils and dice at you.

I'm about 50-80% serious, depending on what "serious" means, in my beliefs in the Big E.

So because I think it would be utterly assine for that to count (or for me to whip out atheist/agnostic Science instead...that's me, personally, not atheists/agnostics doing so), unless the source material by Stoker supports that a star of David is as good as a crucifix, then to the Warp with being politically correct and with people being allergic to anything resembing the One True Faith.

We don't have a mixed bag of Jews, atheists, Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists, and everyone else together in the source material.

However, if you did that, I would object in the strongest possible terms to setting it in the modern (within two generations of the present) world.

Having it be a ground rule that all characters are at least nominally Christian as part of the background works in the Gothic Victorian Era. It even works in the Edwardian era. After that, it becomes increasingly a very bad idea.

Its concept limiting but its not necessarily unreasonable. However, it is bogus to have that in 1950 and total shit to have that in 2000.

If we only have European vampires, having every vampire repellent we can think of doesn't make sense. If we have vampires of the Oriental sort that are supposed to be stopped by sticky rice, crosses won't work on those but sticky rice will.

Also:She was the most seductively beautiful creature that it would be possible for Jurgen's father or any other man to imagine: and her clothes were orange-coloured, for a reason sufficiently well known in Hell , and were embroidered everywhere with green fig-leaves."

Orange? You said this was NOT horrific, baduin.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 1:47 pm

Any physics set where ritual magic is something that you can learn is going to have magic symbols in it. I would be fairly surprised if most or all of those magic symbols were not used by various religions scattered about the planet. And indeed, we shouldn't be terribly shocked if one of the symbols that happens to protect you from physical attack by evil magic spirits happens to look like this:

Keep in mind for a moment that that is a full scale proper Crucifix. It's also a Solstice Wheel. Since it apparently works whether or not you happen to have a model of a hanged king in the middle of it, it stands to reason that you can probably get the same effect with a Karmic Wheel:

And you can get the same effect with a Medicine Wheel:

It probably works even with a Mayan Sun Wheel:

...not because there's something special about Jehova necessarily, but because the actual symbol happens to have power over evil spirits. And that symbol doesn't seem to care if it is colored in brown or gold, and it doesn't seem to care if you put a model of a dead dude on it or the hungry mouth of Kinich Ahau. It doesn't matter if people looking at it envision the "top" to be one of the spokes or one of the spaces. It's a circle with two straight lines that cross in the middle of it. And it has power over evil spirits. And whoever wants to put that fact into a personal religious reference frame is welcome to do so.

As for the circle of cracker dust, maybe the Buddhist circle of sticky rice works just as well? It is essentially the same thing: it's a grain circle. And it keeps uninvited magic monsters from crossing it until it gets wet and blows away or the sun sets. Let's face it, Christians aren't the only pople who do that:

-Username17

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:17 pm

I haven't been researching piles of other religions much, so I wasn't aware of the sticky rice circle. So I'll modify my notes for a grain circle creating the temporary threshold.

The double bisected circle works awesome as far theologians are concerned, as it opens up a few other religions being able to repel vampires; not that it explains the garlic part, but this is magic and I'm using a single book as the authoritative source while using others as logical support.

It'll take a little bit, but I need to research 19th century Gothic assumptions of what gypsies could do. I can likely have the animal transformation thing be a ritual few know, and Dracula's simply that awesome; and knowing a wolf spell can originate werewolf myths easily enough, and even Egyptian mythology has the hawk transformation myth (for non-European views).

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 6:20 pm

Also the X-Men:

Vampires don't like garlic because they have very acute senses of smell, and anything really strong is overpowering.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 6:24 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Any physics set where ritual magic is something that you can learn is going to have magic symbols in it. I would be fairly surprised if most or all of those magic symbols were not used by various religions scattered about the planet. And indeed, we shouldn't be terribly shocked if one of the symbols that happens to protect you from physical attack by evil magic spirits happens to look like this:

Keep in mind for a moment that that is a full scale proper Crucifix. It's also a Solstice Wheel. Since it apparently works whether or not you happen to have a model of a hanged king in the middle of it, it stands to reason that you can probably get the same effect with a Karmic Wheel:

And you can get the same effect with a Medicine Wheel:

It probably works even with a Mayan Sun Wheel:

...not because there's something special about Jehova necessarily, but because the actual symbol happens to have power over evil spirits. And that symbol doesn't seem to care if it is colored in brown or gold, and it doesn't seem to care if you put a model of a dead dude on it or the hungry mouth of Kinich Ahau. It doesn't matter if people looking at it envision the "top" to be one of the spokes or one of the spaces. It's a circle with two straight lines that cross in the middle of it. And it has power over evil spirits. And whoever wants to put that fact into a personal religious reference frame is welcome to do so.

So by that reasoning the following should also work:

("The power of the Artist Formerly Known As Prince compels you!")

these should work:

would this work?

This might work:

Hell by this reasoning:

It's a circle with two straight lines that cross in the middle of it.

this:

should work even better.

This too:

You know, I'm glad to know that in a game run by rank with vampires in it, I could walk up to one and punch it in the face, possibly destroying it.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 6:56 pm

Chaos Undivided, X-Men, and Kord yes. I think the other symbols fail to have lines meeting at right angles in a circle. The Bad Religion symbol, the Camarilla symbol, Prince's symbol, and the Nazi flag are interesting test cases because they have right angles and a circle, but the lines don't get from the center to the outside. Definitely be interesting to see if those worked. But yeah, pretty much.

Garlic is an antiseptic. Since sterilizing the ground keeps Dracula from drawing power from it, it my be as simple as that. Anti-bacterial techniques hurt vampires. That would explain the "I don't drink wine" thing too.

-Username17