Vampire the Masquerade, and D&D hybrid?

[Silverblade The Ench]

Pal was round other night and I installed Vampire the masquerade: Bloodlines, again, to let him play it...and then I played it, lol.
Still an awesome game, IMHO.

However, it made me think about doign a blend of VtM and D&D.

I don't have any of the VtM books, I've heard lot of negative stuff about the new edition, anyone go any input on which edition is best?

And I had an idea: could I blend a VtM style idea, into D&D?
Vampires as blood drinking supernaturals, not undead per se, or different.
I don't like the classic and frankly, boring D&D Count Dracula style vampires.
Far too forumulaic.

In my homebrew campaign, a long running and much hated, muhaha, villain is the lord of the vampires, who was cursed for using his cleric powers ot heal himself rather than dying children after a cataclysm..the curse mixed with the effect of the cataclysm to turn him into a vampire.

Anyway, a blend of VtM and D&D maybe good fun, a new homebrew setting, etc, hm?


My idea is that the classic vampire is actually a vampiric ghost, a spirit so consumed with refusing to die, or earthly pleasures, it won't move on..it needs to feed on blood ot give it physicality. Thus, as a spirit it has no reflection, it can turn gaseous, it's undead etc. SUnlight destroys them.

Sometime their feeding "infects" a victim (or perhaps soem other cause is to blame). These are the more common "vampire". They have few weaknesses, bar sunlight, which causes them a lot of damage.
Not sure if they should be undead, or fey, or deathless, or "monstrous humanoid" or a mix.
They cannot be turned, garlic does nothing too them (though they do have very acute senses so storng odours like galric maybe unpleasant), they regenerate, so only massive damage, decapitation, fire, sunlight permanently kills them.
They need to sleep like mortals.
Their alignment and morals tends to become more selfish and aloof due to their changed nature, not an actual alignment change: they are not inherently Evil, but they often become narcisstic, cruel etc and thus may end up becoming Evil if they don't have strong morals (like "Humanity" rating from VtM: Bloodlines)

Be cool to make clans either directly on VtM, or my own, VtM ones would save me a lot of time.

My homebrew D&D setting has a massive, ancient city, full of weirdness, rival organizations etc,maybe set it there, or new campaign entirely.

What ya think?

 

[C.W.Richeson]

Green Ronin put out Fang and Fury for 3.0, which was essentially blending the two together.

Monte Cook's World of Darkness does a fantastic job of combining the d20 system with a reimagined WoD. Review.

Vampire: The Requiem is quite solid, and I've reviewed a fair bit of the line if you're interested in learning more.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Hm, thanks mate, think I'll get the VtM book then, it sounds more actual fun, to me than the new release

Green Ronin are good, alas their Drow book had lousy print/font, IMHO, shame as the product itself was really nice :/

 

[C.W.Richeson]

Two more thoughts that don't quite mesh with what your'e going for, but might be worth considering:

1. Dark Ages Vampire is just an earlier, historical version of Masquerade with some Clan and setting changes. Exploring crypts seeking the cup of Christ and raiding temples for vampire artifacts are very D&D things to do and easily incorporated into the setting. It's probably cheap as hell to pick up these days, too.

2. Ghostwalk might not be a terrible choice if you want to do vampries as quasi-ghosts and stay solidly in D20 mechanics. It was released at the tail end of 3.0, and I'm sure you could find some reviews.

Barring all those options, which of your suggested templates do you think fit your conception of vampires best? I like suggestions other than undead, since undead get such a huge host of bonuses and special considerations. Fey with the suggestions you're throwing out might be the easiest to implement, and would certainly assist in giving the vampires an otherworldly feel.

 

[Relique du Madde]

There was an ill-fated Monte Cook's World of Darkness that White Wolf put out last year (on the eve of 4e's announcement).

 

[SSquirrel]

I dunno if I would call it ill fated. It was always intended as a single book w/no support as far as I heard. It was just an interestng take on things and the magic system is excellent. Nice stoy behind the world too. Yes maybe if 4E wasn't announced the same GenCon it might have gotten more attention, but I've yet to really see a negative review of it. Maybe some super fanboys who are anti-d20

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Silverblade, you might want to check out this thread.

 

[Cryptos]

I'd seriously consider going for the nWoD and Requiem. True, you'll need the core World of Darkness book for the basic game rules, but nWoD does for WW's system what d20 did for D&D: it provides a simple core mechanic... perhaps even more so than d20 did. (And the core rulebook is fairly cheap at WW's store - US $25, with the V:tR book at $35.)

OWoD's difficulty varied for almost everything. Seven might be a success on this check, five might be a success on that, ten successes for these things, three for those things. So hacking a certain computer might be difficulty five, eight successes while staking someone might be difficulty 7, five successes. (Not right, but that's the general pattern.)

NWoD follows a simpler rule in that 8, 9 and 10 are always successes, with a "ten again" rule, and to make tasks more difficult you simply subtract dice from the dice pool. Is it a little harder than a normal task? -1 to -2 dice. Is it a lot harder than a normal task? Perhaps -3 to -5 dice. You basically know how to play now, except for things like opposed checks (and you can easily guess what that entails.)

It can be a pain to try to remember difficulties and apply them consistently under the old system. The rules in general are much easier to remember and consistently apply.

Another advantage is no advancing metaplot, meaning that regardless of who you game with in the future and what supplements or game information they have, it won't undermine or affect the core rules. OWoD suffered from an ongoing storyline that changed the setting, wiping out certain character types, choices, and setting details as it went along.

At this point, there's just as much out there in terms of resources for nWoD as there was for oWoD. If you're new to the system, there's not much advantage to choosing the old one.

 

[Aus_Snow]

There's also at least one fan-made conversion of VtM to d20, out there somewhere. Used to be several.

I've yet to see a really convincing one though. Maybe I'll have to work on it myself. . . hm.

 

[Tale_Weaver]

I have a good resource for anyone looking to play Vampire: The Masquerade with D20 rules.

Millionaire Geeks - Secret Stash

On there you'll find core rules books that you can use to run the game. The most unique thing on there is the guide for the disciplines. It only covers the Camarilla clans unfortunately but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to convert the rest of the disciplines the way this has.

Hope this helps