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Message no. 1
From: Mike <ASMAD@*****.ALASKA.EDU>
Subject: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 1995 22:23:03 -0800
I know that bringing up religion is a touchy subject on the list, but I
have a question that has been in the back of my mind for a while.
Under the vampire description in SRII it says that some vampires have
psycholgical allergy to holy symbols. Now this is very presumptive on my part,
but when I think holy symbol, I think cross. But what if the Vampire grew up as
a Buddhist? A cross should have no effect on him, since it's all psychological.
Can you imagine a group of runners that know that they have to meet/deal with a
Vampire, so they get lot's and lot's of crosses and holy water. And imagine how
surprised they would be when the symbols had no effect whatsoever because the
Vamp grew up Buddhist, Hindu, whatever!
I was just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them. Being an
inherently evil GM :) I was planning on having my runners go through this sort
of situation. Or would that be too cruel? :)

Mike Driggins
aka Draco
asmad@*****.alaska.edu
Message no. 2
From: "S.F. Eley" <gt6877c@*****.GATECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 02:40:37 -0400
Mike Driggins writes:

> Under the vampire description in SRII it says that some vampires have
> psycholgical allergy to holy symbols. ~~~~
> [Hindu, Buddhist, et al. stuff deleted]
> I was just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them. Being an
> inherently evil GM :) I was planning on having my runners go through this sort
> of situation. Or would that be too cruel? :)


The description does say "some" vampires. And that it's psychological. If
the runners (or their players) didn't figure out the implications of that
before confronting the vampire, they deserve what they get. I'm reminded of
a certain joke, which you all can probably figure out, to which the punch
line is "Oy vey, have YOU got the wrong vampire..." >8->

But don't expect your runners to think of the predictable crosses-and-holy-
water stuff just because you did. The one time I put my group up against
a vampire, they never figured out he was a vampire until he said so. (They
just got pissed at me instead, for not having the guy fall down when they
kept shooting at him.) Once he did, it took no time at all for the ganger
to start disassembling the wooden picture frames in the room...


Blessings,

_TNX._

--
Stephen F. Eley (-) gt6877c@*****.gatech.edu )-( Student Pagan Community
http://wc62.residence.gatech.edu|
My opinions are my opinions. | Ask me about the
Please don't blame anyone else. | Invisible Pink Unicorns...
Message no. 3
From: Sascha Pabst <Sascha.Pabst@****.INFORMATIK.UNI-OLDENBURG.DE>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 14:31:21 +0100
Draco wrote:
> [Holy Symols <-> Psychol. Effects] But what if the Vampire grew up as
> a Buddhist? A cross should have no effect on him, since it's all
> psychological.
> Can you imagine a group of runners that know that they have to meet/deal
> with a
> Vampire, so they get lot's and lot's of crosses and holy water. And
> imagine how
> surprised they would be when the symbols had no effect whatsoever because the
> Vamp grew up Buddhist, Hindu, whatever!
I don't have to imagine: I saw their faces... :-)

> I was just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them. Being an
> inherently evil GM :) I was planning on having my runners go through this sort
> of situation. Or would that be too cruel? :)
Ah, noooo. If you think cruel, what about a communistic vampire?
Or an aggressive Nihilistic? Anarchistic?

Sascha
--
+---___---------+-----------------------------------------+------------------+
| / / _______ | Jhary-a-Conel aka Sascha Pabst | The one does not |
| / /_/ ____/ |Sascha.Pabst@**********.Uni-Oldenburg.de |learn from history|
| \___ __/ | or | is bound to live |
|==== \_/ ======| Westerstr. 20 / 26121 Oldenburg | through it again.|
|LOGOUT FASCISM!| *Wearing hats is just a way of live* | |
+---------------+-----------------------------------------+------------------+
| Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some |
| die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to |
| deal out death in judgement. -- Gandalf |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Message no. 4
From: Leanne Dempsey <leanned@******.COM.AU>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 22:09:17 +0000
Hi Mike (Mike), in <01HWU1WZDPX28X3WJB@**.ORION.ALASKA.EDU> on Oct 24 you wrote:

> Can you imagine a group of runners that know that they have to meet/deal with a
> Vampire, so they get lot's and lot's of crosses and holy water. And imagine how
> surprised they would be when the symbols had no effect whatsoever because the
> Vamp grew up Buddhist, Hindu, whatever!

Sounds like a really nasty idea! I guess it's all up to the GM, but I would
assume that a vampire's psycological reaction would have to do not only with
their religious upbringing, but with the way they think of religion and how
much vampire folklore they've absorbed. It could be really funny to see a
vamp failing to recognise a holy symbol at all and wondering why that guy is
waving a bit of wood at them, or even better to see one freaking at a crucifix
just because they've watched too many B&W vids!

With a bit of background reading, a GM could come up with a whole lot of
nasty folklore with which to confound would-be vampire hunter Runners. How
long do you think it would take the average street sam to realise that because
the vamp is of Chinese origin, it can only be stopped with a bowl of uncooked
rice? :-)

Leanne Dempsey
-------------------------------------
leanned@******.com.au
Message no. 5
From: Mike <ASMAD@*****.ALASKA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 09:14:17 -0800
If you don't mind me asking Sascha, how did the PCs react to that vampire
situation? Did they just freak out when they symbols had no affect? Just
curious.
Mike Driggins
aka Draco
asmad@*****.alaska.edu
Message no. 6
From: "St. Jean, Ricky" <stjeanr@*******.CANADOREC.ON.CA>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 12:25:00 PDT
The deadliest vampire would be an athiest. Sorry bud, I am my own god, and
there ain't no such thing as a holy symbol. Absolutely no symbols would
affect him.

I have run with several vampires as NPCs and the fact that they were athiest
vampires didn't affect the run. Most of our characters are athiest anyway
along with most of the players.

I posted this a couple of weeks ago but has anyone heard of a vampeel. I
saw it in a japanimation film called vampire hunter -D. It was about a
vampire hunter who's father was dracula. He inherited some of his fathers
vampiric abilities like regeneration etc but had no side effects to the
sun/etc. He didn't need blood but still craved it.

comments?
DISCLAIMER
It was the cartoon's idea not mine!!


Ricky
"It's not a question of being paranoid, the question
is are you paranoid enough"
-strange days
<<<<<stjeanr@*******.CANADORE.ON.CA>>>>>
Message no. 7
From: Glenn Robertson <GLENN.ROBERTSON@***.EDU>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 13:06:40 -0700
> I posted this a couple of weeks ago but has anyone heard of a vampeel. I
> saw it in a japanimation film called vampire hunter -D. It was about a
> vampire hunter who's father was dracula. He inherited some of his fathers
> vampiric abilities like regeneration etc but had no side effects to the
> sun/etc. He didn't need blood but still craved it.
>
> comments?
> DISCLAIMER
> It was the cartoon's idea not mine!!

Got that sucker (no pun intended) on video. Only I thought vampires were
supposed to be sterile?? Oh well, makes for an interesting cartoon.

Glenn Robertson ___
Microbiologist Extraordinaire /***\
A.K.A. Miniature Livestock Manager |nasty|
|virus|
"My Homework Ate My Dog!" \***/
[-]
/^+++^\ /\
_/ / # \ \/
/ \ \_
| \
/
Message no. 8
From: Cugel <cugel@**.NET>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 22:44:28 +01.0
On 24 Oct 95 at 22:23, Mike wrote:

> Can you imagine a group of
> runners that know that they have to meet/deal with a Vampire, so
> they get lot's and lot's of crosses and holy water. And imagine how
> surprised they would be when the symbols had no effect whatsoever
> because the Vamp grew up Buddhist, Hindu, whatever!
> I was just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them. Being
> an inherently evil GM :) I was planning on having my runners go
> through this sort of situation. Or would that be too cruel? :)

Naah, it's fun :> . I used it twice so far, once was intentional the
other just happened that way. The first time was in a fantasy
setting: One of the PC's confronted a vampire with a holy symbol of
his diety. But they were a long way from home, so the only thing the
vampire did was looking at it slightly confused and asking him:" Very
nice, is it real gold?"
The second time Gurth told you about; the players thought the vampire
was vulnerable to silver so they got al lot of silver knifes (your
ordinairy bread knife, which also were very blunt). Sadly I couldn't
stop laughing anymore, so they discovered their error before they
attacked the vamp (I penalized them for using player knowledge on
PC's BTW :/, but that's an old story).

Martin Steffens (Cugel@**.net)
When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet
reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point-of-view is
seldom necessary. -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
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Message no. 9
From: Paul Jonathan Adam <Paul@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 17:07:14 GMT
> Under the vampire description in SRII it says that some vampires have
>psycholgical allergy to holy symbols. Now this is very presumptive on my part,
>but when I think holy symbol, I think cross. But what if the Vampire grew up as
>a Buddhist? A cross should have no effect on him, since it's all psychological.

Watch "Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires" for exactly this situation :)

>Can you imagine a group of runners that know that they have to meet/deal with a
>Vampire, so they get lot's and lot's of crosses and holy water. And imagine how
>surprised they would be when the symbols had no effect whatsoever because the
>Vamp grew up Buddhist, Hindu, whatever!

<snigger> Or just have the character wave their crucifix... and the vampire
says "Sorry, I'm an atheist..." Better yet, use an Islamic vampire, and
let them be surprised when waving a Koran at it doesn't help: I found out
from a tour of a police station that if a Koran is touched by unbelievers,
some sects consider it defiled and worthless. (Like the Treasure Island
Bible with a page torn out... "It don't bind no more than a bucky book.")

> I was just wondering if anyone else has had this happen to them. Being an
> inherently evil GM :) I was planning on having my runners go through this sort
> of situation. Or would that be too cruel? :)

Not at all, as long as you give them a way out as well. It's fun when this
happens and "what do we do next?": it's infuriating when the GM says
"The vampire ignores your cross and bites your throat out. You die. Draw
up a new PC."

--
"When you have shot and killed a man, you have defined your attitude towards
him. You have offered a definite answer to a definite problem. For better
or for worse, you have acted decisively.
In fact, the next move is up to him." <R.A. Lafferty>

Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk
Message no. 10
From: Gurth <gurth@******.NL>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 12:43:23 +0100
Leanne Dempsey said on 25 Oct 95...

> Sounds like a really nasty idea! I guess it's all up to the GM, but I would
> assume that a vampire's psycological reaction would have to do not only with
> their religious upbringing, but with the way they think of religion and how
> much vampire folklore they've absorbed.

I played V:TM last weekend for the first time, and was playing someone
who'd only recently become a vampire (actually I started the game as a
mortal) so quite a lot went "Hey, vampires in movies can do X, let's see
if I can do that as well..."

> It could be really funny to see a
> vamp failing to recognise a holy symbol at all and wondering why that guy is
> waving a bit of wood at them, or even better to see one freaking at a crucifix
> just because they've watched too many B&W vids!

The problem here is how will the players recognize the fact that this
vampire only thinks it can be hurt by a holy symbol? Two people running
away from a cross will look pretty similar, IMHO, even if they do it for
different reasons...

> With a bit of background reading, a GM could come up with a whole lot of
> nasty folklore with which to confound would-be vampire hunter Runners. How
> long do you think it would take the average street sam to realise that because
> the vamp is of Chinese origin, it can only be stopped with a bowl of uncooked
> rice? :-)

A recent issue of White Wolf magazine had this bit about different kinds
of Eastern European vampires. Maybe it's good research if you want to have
a vampire in an adventure...?

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
"You need us to get a life."
-> NERPS Project Leader & Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-

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Message no. 11
From: Rueben <R3STG@***.CC.UAKRON.EDU>
Subject: Re: Vampire:Differing Religions
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 10:13:41 EDT
Gurth:
>The problem here is how will the players regonize the fact that this
>vampire only thinks is can be hurt by a holy symbol? Two people running
>away from a cross look pretty similar, IMHO, even if they do it for
>different reasons...

Now you _are_ being senslessly cruel :)
Having the vampire tricking the players into believing that he was
affected by holy symbols... Simple, yet elegant. I like it. <grin>

U-Gene << is been thinking of unnessarily cruel things to do to >>
<< the players. I shouldn't do them _all_ .... >>

Further Reading

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