Hi Tom.
Modern day vampires do give a lot of scope for things it is true, though I
do confess I'm finding that genre being rather sucked dry too with books
like salems lot, not to mention twilight and it's many clones as well as
vampires turning up in other modern day fantasies like the Harry dresden
books. Again, while I've not read the patricia brigs stories you mention, it
sounds like there it's Stephan's character that is the thing that holds,
which is my point, and indeed one of the things that I was so impressed in
particularly in being human. For example, one vampire we meet in the third
series is Adam, who has been 14 for about the past 20 years and has survived
by draining small amounts of blood from his dad, however his dad, now being
incredibly old comes into hospital dying of blood poisoning, leaving the
main cast of the series a problem.
Another modern issue is what to do with the boddies. in the first series of
being human, heric, the head of the local vampires in Bristal is killed,
however heric was a policeman, meaning that whenever a vampire goes tonto
and kills, he was in a perfect position to cover it up. With heric gone
however, the system falls apart, especially because in the being human
world, vampires get off just as much on the killing as the blood, ----
indeed this is why michel, the main character of the series struggles even
though he's a hospital porter who is sneaking blood from the hospitals local
bloodbank.
As to vampires and killing I also agree that the more invincible they are,
the less interesting, again this was where being human introduced a nice
mechanic, that a vampire could be killed by steaking not necessarily in the
heartbut in any part of the back or torso, and to count as a steak something
had to enter the skin and stay there. a vamp if shot up could! recover, but
only after some time, that is why the order of watchers in the second series
used rail guns to slay vampires quite effectively.
also, in Being human warewolves had no supernatural powers at all accept at
the full moon, when they really! grew extreme, but also totally lost control
of themselves and would pretty much attack anyone they came across, indeed
part of the plot concerning george, the main wolf is him finding ways of
transforming without harming people.
Another nice point about being human was that there were no big mystic
organizations. The religious order in the second series was a set of
scientists and zealous priests setup by a vicar after his family were killed
by vampires, while the local vampire clan of bristal was at most a small
outfit with only about 30 vampires in it, and there were many lone ones like
adam who had nothing to do with them. also, the oldest vampire in the series
you ever met was an elder vampire of 500 years, most of the oldest vamps
were at most 200 (michel himself, the main vampire character was a soldier
from the first world war).
Warewolves were even less common in the series, and indeed part of the plot
of two wolves in the second series was a man who infected a boy with
lykanthropy because he was tired of being alone.
So, to bring this back to games, an interesting idea might be to actually
have a mechanic where the more you killed, the more likely you'd be
discovered, indeed this could be tied to a power thing, perhaps with small
amounts of blood needed to survive, but actually killing giving massive
boosts, however then presenting you with the problem of hiding boddies
afterwards.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
---
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