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Rant Ii: Good And Evil And Vampires; Descent Into Sociopathy
Topic Started: Jan 26 2011, 07:03 PM (72 Views)
Laraqua
Administrator
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Well, I've been tossing around a lot of ideas ... forgive me as I'm a little concussed and this may not make much sense ... but I think that the primary themes I like for WoD are Hope and Horror and Compassion and Corruption. Not white and black but light grey and dark grey and black. I like the Lovecraftian horrors. I love the Kult-esque cruelties of the world. I love the sociopathy of Vampire: the Requiem but the sociopathy, I find, can also be a little stifling for plot options. I love the Noir, don't get me wrong, but I really want to explore additional and contrasting themes and I find it harder to show the painful contrasts with a restricted palette (that's right! I'm an artist! So sue me!).

Vampires are antagonistic figures. They are cruel and they are callous and they are monstrous and that makes for an interesting tale. There's nothing like squirming when you see what your own character is doing. There's nothing like refusing to do something simply because its pointless and not because its right or wrong. The older ones, in particular, are often quite vicious though their cruelty is not restricted to the old.

Still, their Morality / Humanity still causes psychic stress. I mean, a Humanity drop from 7 to 6 from petty theft can cause enough psychic strain to lead to a derangement. I mean, an insanity! If a new vampire, say, stole a television that may lead to such psychic strain that they literally gain the Suspicion derangement. So their emotions are faded and stilted but their mentality isn't any more innately evil. It's just harder for them to be compassionate (always costs exp to raise humanity due to the pressure of the Beast and both their lifestyle needs and possible Beastly frenzies lead to extra pressures on their humanity). Not to mention that it's hard to keep a moral compass when your feelings deaden with every sin.

So, vampires aren't innately sociopathic and utterly emotionless. If they were, there'd be no psychic strain and thus no derangements. There'd be no internal conflict. Just take a look at spirits and demons to see what happens when a creature has no internal compass. So a vampire can break down mentally due to their own cruelty and malice. So there's certainly something there. Some remaining heart and soul.

Hell, for all you who thinks vampires are the least human of all the monsters, think again. Look at the morality tree. Now look at the vampire's humanity. It's the same tree. Now look at Clarity, Wisdom and Harmony. I'll wait. What do you see? They're all different to Morality. Striking differences. So, a vampires' internal moral compass is actually closer to human than any other supernatural type - including Mages!

Of course, there is something inhuman about vampires. It's the ease of erosion. The lower down you become, the less reason you have to do anything nice. Humans become more willing when they lose Morality. Vampires become less caring become more willing when they lose Humanity.

That makes it more difficult for vampires to pull themselves out of that way of thinking. You don't care. You're more callous. More hardened. So why not do it again? It takes a concerted effort to remind yourself that you should care.

In case all of you think I am going for a softer game of higher humanity vampires where higher humanity leads to a more human mind-set and closer to human feelings, think again. I will also make it easier for you to play a low Humanity monster. You still have all the social skill caps when interacting with humans but they will know longer recognize a Humanity 1 vampire as an obvious monster. They will fear and mistrust you but they won't scream for the hills. Nor will you be likely to leave the corpses of your Food around. You'll be more mechanical about it but you can still remember that you don't kill your Food simply because it's too messy. You don't torture humans in front of other humans unless its to your calculated advantage. This does also mean more intelligent (though hardly sentient) draugr. The Beast is a coldly rational monster in my game.

So how does Frenzying work? A Frenzy isn't the Beast unchained. It's the Beast made desperate ... which is the only way it can dominate you at levels higher than 0. It fights or flees or feeds stupidly and recklessly because the Beast isn't very good at self-restraint. However, the Beast isn't simply your frenzy contained and thus falling to the Beast doesn't mean falling into perpetual Frenzy. It just means you've fallen to your Beast.

In line with this, there will be more of an emphasis on emotional degradation rather than mental degradation when Humanity drops. Yes, you will still risk derangements the same as before. However, at higher levels of Humanity, you have a more colourful range of emotions. You have no access to emotions you haven't felt in life (except at the highest levels) and the emotions are still stunted compared to being alive but the higher your Humanity the more human you will feel. As your Humanity drops, you become more mechanical and cold. Now, this might manifest in different ways. Some might appear more frivolous and wild, especially Gangrel, but this is an illusion of personality change or strain-induced derangement. The Beast is the ultimate predator and therefore the Draugr, and the urges of a Draugr, are more practical than literally cruel.
OOC: Shannon O'Farrell
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