Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Make Vampires a little less obvious?  (Read 1587 times)

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« on: February 17, 2012, 08:21:53 am »

In a recent adventure, I met a vampire (my first, in fact). I figured it out pretty quickly.

1. He was a reptile man. (At first I thought he was a rabbit whit a legendary skill, which would have been an awesome bug.)
2. He claimed to be a tanner, a fishery worker, and a...something else for 10 years each, plus 17 years as a "ssscout" who stalked and killed tons of people.
3. He had almost 80 pages of items made out of human body materials. Well, except a few (pages of) ones made from dwarf body materials.

So, yeah, he was a vampire. I accused him of being such, and hilarity ensued, including about half a dozen cultists and a kill-stealing miner.
Problem was, I wasn't vampire-hunting. I was hoping to become a necromancer, and when a chance came to unmask the scaley sanguine-slurper, I did so.

Therefore, I suggest that vampires hide their booty (the hair-, bone-, nail-, tooth-, etc, jewelry), possibly in a pouch on their person, possibly in a bag somewhere in the room. Also add in some legitimate ways for reptile people and stuff to live in towns, without being vampires of course, and probably keep them from telling tall tales about their history. (I don't think reptile men live long enough to do all that this one said he did.)

Insert amusing conclusion here.
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

Bronimin

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #1 on: February 17, 2012, 09:19:42 am »

-
« Last Edit: June 07, 2018, 04:43:28 pm by Bronimin »
Logged

Neonivek

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #2 on: February 17, 2012, 09:30:47 am »

Also when you think about it... Why is a vampire even taking not only so many trophies but why trophies at all?
Logged

Megaman_zx

  • Bay Watcher
  • or megadorf.....megaelf?
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #3 on: February 17, 2012, 09:37:20 am »

i found a vampire on accident when i saw a random farmer blinking blue like he was famous or something, so i talked to him and getting suspicious of his past, asked if he was a vampire... surprise!!!

Although, it seems like all of us found the vampires by accident, and getting a quest to kill one points you to the city where the vampire is.... so its not like you can just unmask vampires all over, or that its completely obvious, you still have to search for them. I just don't want to have to do a full investigation just to find a vampire.
Logged
Tales of the Third Age, 34.11 rp stories from Genesis Reborn

“Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place. And stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.”

-Deadhouse Gates (Book 2 in the Malazan Book of the Fallen) by Steven Erikson

kaypy

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #4 on: February 17, 2012, 10:16:57 am »

Why is a vampire even taking not only so many trophies but why trophies at all?
Well, there are a bunch of mythologies in which vampirism is associated with obsessive compulsive tendencies...
Logged

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #5 on: February 17, 2012, 11:42:21 am »

Also when you think about it... Why is a vampire even taking not only so many trophies but why trophies at all?
All(most all?) sentients who kill other sentients make trophies out of the hard parts of their bodies. Toady seemsnot to have changed that. Therefore, since vampires kill hundreds of people in order to not starve, they have enough cheap crafts to buy a couple caravans. They also seem to eventually get some skill; I took a dwarf hair amulet (I imagined it was a shaped dwarf beard) which was superior quality. A few more centuries and he might have had some masterwork human nail toe rings or something...

i found a vampire on accident when i saw a random farmer blinking blue like he was famous or something, so i talked to him and getting suspicious of his past, asked if he was a vampire... surprise!!!

Although, it seems like all of us found the vampires by accident, and getting a quest to kill one points you to the city where the vampire is.... so its not like you can just unmask vampires all over, or that its completely obvious, you still have to search for them. I just don't want to have to do a full investigation just to find a vampire.
Well, I wasn't looking for vampires. I was actually looking for stores, because I hadn't realized I was in a hamlet. I saw this blinking brown r, wondered why the rabbit was in a house and blinking, and saw it was a reptile man tanner with a large number of human (material) crafts. I chatted, accused, and tried to kill the vampire. (A random miner got credited with the kill, then said he wasn't worthy to travel with me.) So, yeah, it should be a bit harder to notice.
The whole "Reptile Man" part is kinda...interesting, too.
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

Babylon

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #6 on: February 17, 2012, 12:53:50 pm »

trophies from actual kills are neat, trophies from feeding makes world gen slow down and makes vampires too obvious.
Logged

irmo

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #7 on: February 17, 2012, 06:51:24 pm »

Well, there are a bunch of mythologies in which vampirism is associated with obsessive compulsive tendencies...

Good point.

ONE...TWO...THREE...FOUR...FIVE *dwarf bone necklaces*!  AH HA HA HA HA!
Logged

truckman1

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #8 on: February 20, 2012, 04:24:49 pm »

The whole idea of concealing the evidence would probably be best, yeah. My first vampire was the king of the whole civilization, who appeared to have killed a hundred or so guys in his life time of about 200 years. It is pretty damn annoying too, when you bash them in the hand and they drop their four pages of -human hair crown- and +human nail earring

That's nothing. In my world, straight from starting my adventure, before I gained any fame, I was sent to kill a ~210 vampire woman serving as the town's law-giver, a position she had for a little over 100 years. In her lifetime, she had killed somewhere in the neighborhood of.....~4125 or so people.
 :o
Yeah....She was an inspiration for Adventure-mode players everywhere. So, eventually I got around to killing this 1-woman-genocide machine. Whenever I hacked off a hand, or when I knocked her over causing her to drop whatever non-equippable crafts she made, there were SEVERAL DOZEN pages of dropped things.


I was going to make a thread here suggesting we somehow get this sort of thing under control, but fortunately it seems I'm not the only one annoyed by this. What do you think would cause more lag, vampire's and their arts-n-craft's jewelry, or all the stray animals grooming themselves and each other?
Logged
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
That's the point, it wouldn't be as fun to crush their souls if they didn't have souls to begin with.

Kavalion

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #9 on: February 20, 2012, 04:29:48 pm »

Maybe if they started to throw away their least notable kill trophies and kept the top five or so?
Logged

thvaz

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Make Vampires a little less obvious?
« Reply #10 on: February 20, 2012, 04:36:41 pm »

took from a Post I make about the same subject...

Vampires in fortress modeare almost as good as they can be, however they could be better if they try to get positions of power inside the fortress as soon as possible. Their disguises can be improved too (for example, they should try to feed in ambush mode - invisible to the player). When guilds and cults are in, they should form their own cults inside your fortress.
My greatest problem with them is the fact they don't have randomized traits as was hinted during development. I would like this possibility to be developed.
In adventure mode I just had bad experiences with them. Maybe because of bugs, they practically announce themselves as vampires. You can see them a mile away.
Besides that, there is the fact that you can denounce anyone as a vampire without any consequence, and this is weird. You can denounce someone and after that ask them to join you, and they will happily accept. You should have, at least for now, someone refusing to talk with you, or do not let you sleep in their house if you denounce them if they aren't a vampire. This way, the player won't risk that option in the less suspicion of someone being a vampire.
Logged