History OurVampiresAreDifferent / TabletopGames

* ''TabletopGame/InNomine'': Vampires are undead created when a ritual meant to make [[OurMummiesAreDifferent a mummy]] goes awry. They're harmed by direct sunlight, and need nightly intake of some substance or stimulus -- archetypally blood, but it can be essentially anything -- to regenerate Essence.

** This may make it seem that Palladium vampires are weak, but keep in mind that in ''Rifts'' at least, they're capable of tearing tanks apart with their bare hands. Furthermore, nothing not listed above can even ''scratch'' them (no, not even a ''{{nuke|Em}}''.

%%** [[SpaceElves The Dark Eldar]] always had some vampiric characteristics, but their most recent codex update plays them up to a much greater degree.%%ZCE, examples aren't recent.

** 3rd party setting ''TabletopGame/WagaduChronicles'' has the Adze, a vampire that transforms into a firefly rather than a bat from a FantasyCounterpartCulture of ancient Africa.

** 3rd party setting ''TabletopGame/WagaduChronicles'' has the Adze, a vampire that transforms into a firefly rather than a bat from a FantasyCounterpartCulture of AncientAfrica.

* The complex zombie creation rules in ''TabletopGame/AllFleshMustBeEaten'' allow you to create highly sophisticated and intelligent undead predators with immense strength and a hunger for human blood -- a truly horrific and daunting opponent for zombie survivalists (and players) accustomed to garden-variety shamblers. The ''Atlas of the Walking Dead'' supplement expands on this to introduce a full palette of vampire archetypes, including the Gothick Vampire (the classic Slavic vampire made famous by ''Dracula'', ''Interview with the Vampire'' and ''Carmilla''), the Vampire (the bestial, rapacious undead fiends of European myth), and the [[ChineseVampire Gyonshi]], Penanggalan, Shuten-Doji and Vrykolakas.
* Creator/{{Chaosium}}'s supplement ''All the Worlds' Monsters'' Volume III. The Vamplock is a vampire with the innate ability to use magic as an 8th level magic user, control the weather and change itself into a wolf. [[WeakenedByTheLight It loses all of its magical powers in sunlight]].

* 5 different kinds exist in ''TabletopGame/BleakWorld'':

** Finally are the Wendigo, which are more of a super powered cannibal that are lumped in with the vampires anyway. Oddly enough they look the most human but act the most insane.

* There're a number of possible ways to become a vampire in ''TabletopGame/ChuubosMarvelousWishGrantingEngine'' -- some have cause to come back from the dead, some are cursed, and some are turned by other vampires. No matter the cause, they share similar properties: they're undead, they don't age, they're typically superhumanly strong, tough, fast and graceful, they don't need air, water or human food, they have predatory body language that unsettles humans, and they can create more of their kind. They can feed on blood or [[EmotionEater negative emotion]], and even those with an active taste for blood are typically against assault and murder; some drink "pillow-teeth tea", which makes their teeth squishy, in order to reassure humans. They're vulnerable to sunlight, but some are strong enough to ignore it. Their capacity to love is broken - they ''can'' love, but they don't know how to be ''friends'', so their relationships can be dysfunctional. They can have additional strengths or weaknesses as well. There's also mention of vampire princesses, who can walk in the sunlight and hide their predatory body language.

* All vampire [=PCs=] in [[http://paizo.com/products/btpy8d48?Demon-Hunters-RPG-Hardcover Demon Hunters]] are of the FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire variety by virtue of an artificial blood they can drink out of water bottles. However, vampires are still subject to something called The Chill: since vampires aren't technically alive, they are cold blooded, and they can feel it. The only thing which makes them feel warm (other than sitting in a sauna or something) is drinking human blood.

** The D&D vampire family tree gets all the more sprawling and confusing because certain concepts are sometimes revisited with new takes between settings and/or editions.

*** The standard Vampire, everybody knows this.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Everway}}'' supplement ''Spherewalker Sourcebook''. Queen Sunset the Undying, ruler of the Red Merchants, [[SoulJar removes their souls and places the souls in a receptacle]], which causes them to become a form of vampire. The newest are called Knights, and with time (at least 50 years) they can become Barons or Baronesses, and even Dukes or Duchesses.

* In ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'', the only way the Abyssals can regain essence when not in the underworld is to grow fangs, and then either suck blood or eat people. (Or with a charm, suck out their essence by cutting them with magic swords). As a single normal person drained to death only gives you back the essence required to grow fangs in the first place, this is only effective when killing large numbers of people at once.

** The supplement "Night's Dark Masters" gets around this problem by simply listing pages and pages of weaknesses and quirks of vampires, from the classics like weakness to sunlight to lesser-known ones like obsessive counting and fear of sawdust, and then simply says that all vampires have some of them but not others. This is neatly explained by the fact that inbreeding and crossbreeding between different vampire clans has accentuated some traits and rarified others.
** The ''Warhammer'' novel ''Literature/{{Drachenfels}}'' expands on this further, from the point of view of its heroine, the Vampire Geneviève Dieudonné. And if that name sounds familiar to fans of the ''Literature/AnnoDracula'' series, guess who ''Drachenfels'' author Jack Yeovil is a pseudonym for?
** In the main strategy game, however, all Vampires belong to one of five major bloodlines, each with a distinct set of traits and hailing back to a specific progenitor among the first vampires created when Queen Neferata of Lahmia created an improved but still imperfect version of the elixir of immortality, whose effects turned first herself and then a select circle of men into the first vampires to exist.

** These bloodlines are also prominently figuring in "Night's Dark Masters". It's just that there is always a chance of some sort of randomness in a specific Vampire's weakness (and to keep the players guessing about a Vampiric Antagonist's weakness). To make the players never rely on the same tactic against vampires.

** [[SpaceElves The Dark Eldar]] always had some vampiric characteristics, but their most recent codex update plays them up to a much greater degree.

** Mods are an affectionate parody of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' and (to a lesser extent) ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer''; they are immune to sunlight and mostly exist to molest teenage girls.

* "Oupires" in ''TabletopGame/{{Ironclaw}}'' lack most of the usual advantages, instead they're simply intelligent (and usually high level) undead who gain a bite attack (if they didn't already have one) and if killed they'll rise again the next night unless buried in consecrated ground, and even then they'll rise again if dug up. On the other hand they don't have any weaknesses to things like holy symbols, running water, or sunlight, just SuperOCD that ''might'' give them an aversion to one of those things. If they starve to death from lack of blood, they rise again as a mere [[OurWightsAreDifferent Barrow Wight.]]

** Another difference to ''Masquerade'' is that rather than having power set by Generation, vampire "Blood Potency" increases with age, increasing by one stage for every fifty years of unlife. [[MonstrousCannibalism Diablerie]] still allows one to accelerate the process. However, thickening blood is a case of PowerAtAPrice; the vampire can use its abilities to much higher levels and more effectively, but it also becomes [[PickyPeopleEater increasingly limited in feeding options]], eventually reaching the point where only other vampires (or at least other supernatural creatures) are nourishing. For this reason, they can choose to voluntarily enter a death-like slumber called Torpor, slowly thinning out their blood over the decades so they can wake up to a technically easier life.

** Vampires are vulnerable to sunlight and fire as a whole, and various factors have led to the species [[VampireVarietyPack diverging into a number of different "clans"]], each having its own additional weakness, some of which also come from the "traditional" list. (The Lasombra don't have reflections, the Ventrue have very specific feeding requirements, etc.) Vampiric powers are represented by "disciplines", with each clan specializing in certain ones. Stakes to the heart merely paralyze vampires in this setting instead of killing them. In addition to the one standard with the clan of choice, additional flaws (including other clans' weaknesses and classic ones like being repelled by garlic) can also be selected at character creation. Furthermore, vampire potency is based on "Generation", or how many stages there is between the vampire itself and the First Vampire, [[CainAndAbel Caine]]. This trait is set in stone at siring, but a vampire can strengthen its blood and close the generational gap... by [[MonstrousCannibalism draining the blood of another vampire]] and ''[[YourSoulIsMine eating its soul]]'', an act so common that it has its own name: diablerie.

** Nosferatu are the most well-known of the Deadlands vampires, having first appeared in Dime Novel #3 "Night Train". Based upon [[Film/{{Nosferatu}} Count Orlock]], they are bald, vicious, near-mindless brutes. Unfortunately for the Weird West, they're also extremely widely spread; their condition is contagious, and one of Baron [=LaCroix's=] more hairbrained schemes has seen them dispersed across the Disputed Territories. Worse yet, they're NighInvulnerable; physical attacks can stagger them, but not hurt them, and staking them merely paralyzes them -- only decapitating them or exposing them to sunlight does the job.

** Vampires are the spawn of huge, multi-tentacled {{Eldritch Abomination}}s called Vampire Intelligences. They come in three levels: The Master Vampire, who makes a pact with the Intelligence to become a Vampire, the Secondary, who is created by the Master over a three-day "Slow Kill", and occasionally another Secondary when things go right, and the savage and feral Wild Vampire, which is what happens when a Secondary Vampire's attempt at transforming a human goes wrong. While they can be hurt by silver, wood, magic, or the claws of a [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Dragon]], actually ''killing'' them requires sunlight, or impaling (staking) them through the heart followed by decapitation (just staking them turns them into a skeleton, but it's really a cheap form of suspended animation; remove the stake and you'll have a live (and ''hungry'') vampire in under a minute) ''and'' burning both head and body to ash separately. Oh, or [[WeaksauceWeakness running water]]. Not only can they not cross running water, but merely ''touching'' water in motion is dangerous, and can kill them on its own. This makes fire hoses, rain, and even ''water guns'' deadly weapons against them. They must also sleep in or near the soil of their native land; a generous layer of the stuff in their coffin will do. If they lose their soil, and can't get any more before the night is over, they can't sleep, and are easy prey for the rising sun. Finally, crosses ward them off regardless of the faith of the wielder (it's not religious but a property of the Intelligences' [[AlienGeometries hyperdimensional geometry]]), and the touch of a cross will harm them. They are also harmed by the ''shadow'' of a cross falling on them. Many Vampire hunters have taken to taping a cross over flashlights or the headlights of their vehicles for an extra measure of protection. Bare-handed attacks from True Atlanteans and certain other creatures can harm vampires, as well. Whether they're terribly effective or not is another matter...
** The ''Nightbane'' game also adds the Wampyr, a mutation of a Secondary Vampire. They're invulnerable to water, and can stay out in the sun for periods of time, but are not as strong as a normal Vampire.