All Flesh Must Be Eaten: The complex zombie creation rules 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 Gyonshi, Penanggalan, Shuten-Doji and Vrykolakas.
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. It loses all of its magical powers in sunlight.
Ars Magica goes for broke and has all types of vampire, they being a species of fae who imitate people whose death or corpse's treatment was sufficiently layered with inauspicious symbolism that it attracted the reforming soul of the fae in question (the only guaranteed method to draw one is to die whilst a Dhampir, and indeed dhampir hunters have a code of honor to hunt down and destroy each other's vampires). After a period as a ghostly presence that harasses the family of the template, the vampire takes physical form and starts hunting for blood, their way of getting the Vitality (importance and self-will) that all fae need (this is also why they have unique vulnerabilities; the story of how a Vampire Hunter figured out their quarry and slew them does not harm the fae soul and it simply reincarnates, the Vitality from being slain being just as nourishing as feeding). Eventually, a vampire who has been allowed to exist for seven years becomes largely indistinguishable from a human, apart from their need for blood, and can father children. Absolutely nobody likes them, given how they all have the Blue-and-Orange Morality common to all fairies and target people close to their template because betrayal is more emotionally meaningful (and thus Vitality-rich).
The Dracul exhibit classic vampire mythology (No resistance skill, so they can't go out in the sun), shapeshifting, and generally looking like their progenitor Vlad Dracul. Also all the females of the Dracul vampires are lesbians.
Mods are an affectionate parody of The Twilight Saga and (to a lesser extent) Buffy the Vampire Slayer; they are immune to sunlight and mostly exist to molest teenage girls.
Primals are barely sentient beasts who are pretty unique to the mythos (they can turn into sharks and falcons for example); they live in very outdated tribal settings, in sewers, or on farms.
Nosferatu are the Hammer Horror version; they dwell in darkness and are the most magical oriented of vampires. They get bonuses to Shapeshifting, Magic, and Feeding. As such they have little to no combat application.
The Wendigo are more of a type super powered cannibal that's lumped in with the vampires anyway. Oddly enough, they look the most human but act the most insane.
Blackbirds RPG: The Striga are the descendants of the human rulers of Corbel who were transformed by a divine curse for their horrific torture of the Aes. They begin their life cycle as a swarm of oversized grubs which infest a human corpse, with the grub the reaches the heart first becoming the controlling intelligence of the group, puppeteering the body to masquerade as human while the others become unintelligent flea-like nymphs bound to its will. Over time this central striga grows in size, power, and intellect, its host body bloating and deforming to fit the striga until it fully sheds its rotting shell and becomes one of the enormous Titan Casks. They possess the typical weaknesses to being damaged in the heart (since that is where the parasite is rooted) and sunlight, as well as being vulnerable to weapons made of quickbronze and immersion in salt or salt water, with such a strong aversion to salt that the sea keeps them effectively trapped on their island home. They possess great strength and resilience alongside a Hypnotic Gaze.
Blades in the Dark uses "vampire" as a term for ghosts possessing specially prepared corpses. They develop traditional vampire weaknesses like inability to enter private residences without invitation (a potentially disastrous drawback given that Blades in the Dark player characters are criminals) or being repelled by spiritbane charms, they can't technically die but enter a torpid state where they need to feed to recover, and no matter what their Vice was, it's replaced with a need to consume life energy.
Vampires in the kickstarted RPG Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants become what they are by consuming great amounts of a substance made of blood and silver called Blood Sterlings, and maintain this state by consuming human blood. Blood sterlings are used as currency in the setting, meaning that only the rich can become vampires. The vampire can become human again by simply not consuming blood, and vampirism is not contageous. In other words, vampires are rich people who voluntarily become bloodthirsty parasites that prey on the small folk. Have we mentioned that Eat the Rich is a major theme of the game?
Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine: There're a number of possible ways to become a vampire — 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 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.
The game has a Vampire template with the most well known vampiric strength and weaknesses, although a vampire can remove any weakness by removing one of its powers.
d20 Future adds mutant vampires. That is to say, mutants with fangs and blood cravings. And, for some of them, a violent reaction to UV light. Those are mostly normal (except for possible other mutations) beyond that though.
Deadlands has a wide variety of vampires in it, most of whom originated in the 2nd "Rascals, Varmints & Critters" booknote Nosferatu, Penanggalen, Ustrel, Wampyr, Cinematic Vampire or in "The Epitaph #3"note Nachtzeher, Shtriga, Upir. A handful of other kinds appeared in other sourcebooks as well.
Nosferatu are the most well-known of the Deadlands vampires, having first appeared in Dime Novel #3 "Night Train". Based on Count Orlok, 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 Nigh-Invulnerable; 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.
Penanggalen, and their incredibly male counterparts the Kephn, are Southeast Asian bloodsuckers who take the form of normal people during the day, only for their heads & guts to detach at night and go hunting for their meals. Only sunlight can destroy them, but thorny branches or bushes ca be used to snare them or keep them at bay until dawn rises.
Ustrels are Bulgarian vampires born from toddlers who died of abandonment or neglect. Though voracious eaters, they vastly prefer livestock to humans, and usually confine their attentions to cattle. Small mercy for the rancher, who can lose an average of seven or eight steers to one ustrel on a nightly basis! Resembling claw-nailed, cat-eyed toddlers with only four large, protruding canine teeth, they're normally invisible unless exposed to firelight, and can be destroyed by a shot through the heart.
Wampyrs are generic Eastern European vampires, and function more like blood-drinking, plague-spreading zombies than anything. They are physically harmed by the touch of roses or garlic, and can be slain if exposed to sunlight or beheaded — however, sunlight only burns them if they are active; a wampyr resting in its coffin is immune to the effects of sunlight.
Cinematic Vampires are more generic "Gothic" vampires, of the kind popularized by modern vampire media. They even have their "inspiration", Dracula, in the setting as well.
Chinese Vampires, or Gyonshee, appear in the Great Maze sourcebook. They're treated as a kind of zombie, with nasty claws that spread the gyonshee curse, but easily defeated by blowing their brains out with a sixshooter.
Nachtzeher are Germanic vampires who have no fangs, forcing them to instead chew at flesh to force out the blood. In this, they're more like ghouls who prefer blood to flesh; they tend to focus on raiding graves for easy prey, but will kill living creatures if they can. They're easy to recognize, because their hands and arms are always viciously chewed upon, the nachtzeher having gnawed at its own flesh upon first rising. Worse still, a victim killed by a Nachtzeher will become one in turn unless buried without their grave clothes — an idea that most denizens of the Weird West will not take kindly to. Repelled by garlic, roses and black dogs, they can only be killed by being staked with a rosewood stake and having their mouths filled with garlic.
Shtriga are unique in that they're not "real" vampires; they're evil witches from Central Europe who have learned to feed on blood to power theirBlack Magic and preserve their youth. They are voracious eaters, drinking blood until their stomachs bulge out like a pregnant woman's and beyond, forcing them to gruesomely vomit excess gore near the site of their feeding. What's eve more nasty is that this puked blood can be used to create an amulet that shields the bearer against the shtriga's magic. Warded off by crosses made from pig bones, the only way to end their evil is to hammer a stake through their stomach, otherwise they regenerate and rise again, no matter how grave the damage.
Upirs are immensely strong Central European vampires who prefer to strangle their victims before feeding. Incredibly tough, they have two hearts, making them immune to the normal staking methodoloogy; instead, they must be burned to ashes or have an iron spike driven into their skull before they die. They're also immune to sunlight and holy items, a nasty surprise for the ill-prepared vampire hunter. Add in their ability to induce heart attacks in anyone who meets their gaze, and they are arguably the nastiest vampire breed in the Weird West.
Demon Hunters: All vampire PCs are of the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire 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.
Dragon Dice gives us its spin on the vampire — a light mage unit in the undead army with the unique ability to convert killed members of other races into undead. They have mediocre spellcasting abilities and can also perform better in melee than a more focused mage.
In older versions, vampires had the somewhat inexplicable ability to permanently drain life force (in the form of Character Levels) by simply hitting their victim in melee, which for sufficiently low-level characters (like, say, your average peasant) would basically translate into an automatic no-save-allowed death touch; depending on the precise edition and type of vampire involved this could be in addition to or in place of drinking blood. They were also resistant to nonmagical weapons, could create a Charm Person effect on eye contact, and had the ability to turn into bat, wolf, or mist form... as well as the traditional problems with sunlight, running water, and having to sleep in a coffin.
The Draconomicon supplement provides rules for vampire dragons, who have to sleep in their treasure instead of a coffin (though this is appropriate for dragons; some dragons who got their treasure stolen were unable to reach the afterlife, and had to stay as ghosts) and they have reduced weaknesses compared to "normal" vampires. Strangely they still can't get into houses uninvited, though a vampire dragon may decide to just demolish the house. You don't have to be invited to enter in a pile of rubble.
This was expanded further in the Ravenloft campaign setting, which included a bewildering array of vampires. Not only were the standard type given expanded weaknesses (and opportunities to NOT have those weaknesses), there were also myriad different vampires based on a blend of real-world mythologies, demihumans, and the D&D tradition of taking variant names for a real monster and making them into entirely seperate monsters. Van Richten's Guide to Vampires, rather than dispelling the classical vampiric weaknesses, lists less common variations and spent a lot of time detailing how vampires got around them: A vampire could not cross running water for instance, but nothing prevented them from being carried (including in a carriage); a vampire could not enter a home uninvited, but Charm Person is a wonderful way of getting an invitation extended. Oh, and if you're thinking of hiding from Strahd von Zarovich, remember that the feudal hierarchy of his domain means he technically "owns" every house in Barovia...
That advantage is (or maybe was) shared by another vampire Darklord, Kas the Destroyer, Lord of Tor Gorak and the eternal enemy of Vecna. Possibly even stronger than Strahd, exposing him to sunlight may defeat him, but not kill him; he'll return in a few days if that happens. And while he can be killed by a stake through the heart, said stake must be made of wood from a tree grown in the soil of his homeworld of Oerth. No stake of wood grown in Ravenloft can harm Kas. However, when Vecna, whose realm of Cavitius bordered Tor Gorak, escaped from Ravenloft, it is unknown what happened to Kas; it is known that the heroes in the adventure used his Sword to defeat Vecna, an artifact very vital to Kas's power.
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.
An arguably complete list of D&D's vampires:
The standard vampire, everybody knows this.
Nosferatu originally appeared in two different iterations; one for Ravenloft, and the other for Mystara. Neither were the bestial-looking vampires typically associated with the name. Mystaran nosferatu are unaffected by sunlight and aren't always evil, though they do still need to feed on blood and retain a number of other weaknesses. The original Ravenloft nosferatu was basically a variant of the common vampire which fed on blood rather than Life Energy, mechanically represented by their draining Constitution rather than levels, and which could charm victims with its bite as well as its gaze. In 3rd edition, only the Ravenloft nosferatu appeared, but now it had absorbed some traits from its Mystaran counterpart; the 3e Ravenloft nosferatu is also immune to sunlight (but going about in the sun robs them of their powers until they sleep in a coffin or grave for 8 hours), retains the mind-controlling bite of its 2nd edition counterpart, and now has a unique Healing Factor that lets them regenerate any damage not done by fire, acid, blessed weapons or holy weapons. In 5th edition, the Ravenloft nosferatu returned and changed again, becoming a feral, ghoul-like, perpetually starving bestial vampire with the iconic appearance.
The Chinese Vampire, whilst only appearing in Ravenloft, was another convoluted story. The original iteration, known as the Oriental Vampire, is largely a Japanese/Chinese twist on the standard vampire, with a sprinkling of traits from the actual Jiangshi and even a few bits of the Bakeneko; they can't climb walls like spiders, but can walk through them and fade away like ghosts, they can't turn into mist but can levitate, they turn into tigers rather than wolves, they are repulsed by rosemary rather than garlic, and killing the requires a bamboo stake. Third edition tried to make the Jiangshi roots more obvious with the artwork and a new name; the Chiang-shi. Fifth edition completed the metamorphosis into something much closer to the folklore, but still retaining a few distinctly Western Vampire traits.
The Velya is another Mystara-unique vampire, this one an aquatic vampire that haunts both the open ocean and swamps. Oceanic velyas can turn into sharks and manta rays; swamp velyas can turn into albino alligators and eels.
Cerebral Vampires are a Ravenloft variant that feed on cerebral-spinal fluid.
Vampyres, unlike most vampiric beings, are living (not undead) creatures. They resemble the typical vampire, and feed on human (always human) blood, but while they tend to be physically stronger and prefer night to day, they have none of the traditional vampire's powers or weaknesses. Apparently, in primitive times, vampyres were predators who filled the same ecological niche as wolves, but their prey was humans; there's no true need for that niche now, but they still exist, and still hunt humans both for survival and for purpose.
Vorlogs are cursed Vampire Vannabe or pseudo-Dhampyrs created when a vampire is killed part of the way through transforming a human into a Bride/Groom (a special Mindlink Mates version of a vampire). The result is a mad, haunted creature that burns in the sunlight, displays vampiric pallor and budding fangs, possesses Super-Toughness and a mild Healing Factor, feeds on "spiritual energy" (Wisdom) by draining it with a touch, can Charm Person and drive animals into violently insane rage, and is obsessed with finding a replacement for its slain "mate", using its mind-leeching and controlling powers to create surrogates that it inevitably destroys due to being "not good enough".
Demihuman vampires originated in Ravenloft, and the original list included Drow, Goblin and Kender Vampires alongside the traditional Dwarven, Elven, Gnomish and Halfling quartet, although only the iconic quartet made it into the 3rd edition update of the setting, however. Each demihuman strain has its own peculiarities; elven vampires are immune to sunlight but harmed by moonlight and kill plants with a touch; dwarven vampires can pass through stone as if it were thin air; gnomish vampires are cursed with muteness; halfling vampires can magically summon, purify or defile food but are repulsed by the smoke from pipe.
Also hailing from Ravenloft are the vrykolaka, based on the idea of the vampire as disease carrier in Eastern European lore. They resemble decaying corpses ravaged by disease with green glowing eyes, and their minds are shattered by the vampiric transformation, reducing their intellect. They have claws but lack fangs, instead draining blood through their unnaturally long, barbed, and prehensile tongue, and while they themselves are immune to disease, they can spread it to others through their attacks. They can turn either into a swarm of normal rats or a single dire rat. They share most of the standard vampiric weaknesses, but add anise to the list of things that repulse them, and are incapacitated by an iron spike to the skull rather than a wooden stake to the heart.
4th edition vampires vary almost as much, including spirit-form vampires and the Vampire Muse, which looks like a goth eladrin.
La Notte Eterna, a 3rd party setting for D&D 5e: The High Vampires of Neir call themselves the Hjilaki, and up until the sun went away, they were a largely subterranean species, seldom venturing onto the surface. Now that Neir is under a never-ending night, they've made an outpost for themselves on the surface, the tyrannical Blood Domain, from which they wage war on Ouin.
Everway supplement Spherewalker Sourcebook: Queen Sunset the Undying, ruler of the Red Merchants, 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.
They must feed on blood. Knights must drink the blood of a close relative. Barons and Baronesses can feed on the blood of any human being. Dukes and Duchesses can survive on the blood of any creature with a soul, and if they drink the blood of an animal they can take that animal's form.
Knights are immune to aging in the normal way, but their bodies will decay over time. Barons and Baronesses can avoid decay as long as they drink blood regularly.
Knights are damaged by sunlight, repelled by roses and silver and harmed by silver weapons. Barons and Baronesses are similar, except that they can overcome the effect of roses. Dukes and Duchesses are vulnerable only to prolonged sunlight and weapons made of silver, water, or spirit. Some new Knights are repelled by a picture of a rose and are vulnerable to ordinary weapons.
Barons and Baronesses regenerate all damage within two days except for harm inflicted by silver weapons, by ice, or by weapons of the spirit, which heals at the normal rate for humans. Dukes and Duchesses can heal damage taken in one day regardless of source.
Some Barons and Baronesses can take "whisper form", which allows them to become fog-like and move around in that form. All Dukes and Duchesses can do so.
If the container holding a Red Merchant's soul is opened or broken, the soul flees and their body is destroyed.
A wooden stake to the heart can inconvenience a Red Merchant but not destroy them.
Many Dukes and Duchesses have high charisma and a dominating appearance.
Red Merchants are deathly pale, a condition which can't be changed by feeding. Most use cosmetics to cover this, with varying success. They are corpse-cold as well, and they neither sweat nor bleed. Dukes and Duchesses who have recently fed gain a ruddy color and the warmth of the living.
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.
Godforsaken: Vampires are powerful undead created by the necromancer Crumellia and act as her assassins, generals and advisors. Unlike other undead they are free-willed, and some have chosen to desert their creator and strike out on their own.
GURPS: Blood Types is an entire supplement book of variant vampires.
The vampire template from GURPS: Fantasy has the odd flaw that it cannot heal from injury unless they bathe in blood. Wood is the only thing that can kill them and crosses won't repel them unless imbued with real divine power.
The old GURPS Supers had as a sample character Nightflick, a vampire who rejected his sire and only needs to feed during the full moon — retaining almost all of his human traits and personality, he becomes a Super Hero. He can fly in the form of a man-sized bat, bullets pass through him without harm, and he hides his identity while vigilante-ing by dressing up as... a vampire. Pale makeup, black cloak, fake fangs, red contacts, speaks in Vampire Vords, etc., the Full Lugosi.
Hero Realms is pretty traditional with their Vampires, who are aligned with a demon worshiping death cult. Krythos, Master Vampire is a suave and well dressed fellow. Lys, the Unseen in contrast is a ghoulish, bestial vampire. Both have the ability to get rid of cards from the player's deck, with an added damage bonus for doing so.
"Oupires" in 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 obsessive-compulsiveness 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 Barrow Wight.
One of the characters in The Book of Horn and Ivory is an oupire (with a personal history not entirely dissimilar to Vlad Tepes) who is also a vampire (that is, a Funny Animal bat of the family Desmodontinae).
In La Notte Eterna, the High Vampires of Neir call themselves the Hjilaki, and up until the sun went away, they were a largely subterranean species, seldom venturing onto the surface. Now that Neir is under an never-ending night, they've made an outpost for themselves on the surface, the tyrannical Blood Domain, from which they wage war on the Duchy of Ouin.
Vampires used to be the staple creature type for rare fliers for Black. They often have a "feeding" mechanic that made them stronger by killing creatures in combat, but it was of limited use, since they don't often get into combat. More recent vampires have dealt with this by focusing on the bat aspects or by feeding on players. Since 2010, creative decided to focus on Demons as the main black rare creatures, and vampires became more common and therefore simpler, sometimes lacking abilities. Lifelink, an ability that allows the player to gain life when they deal damage, is common on vampires. They don't have explicit weaknesses due to creature type.
The Vampiric Dragon — presumably the product of a vampire with a lot of ambition.
The Skyshroud Vampire is an unusual one, being essentially a gigantic, monstrous bat and little more than a feral predator, and shelters within the thick Skyshroud Forest to avoid the light of the sun.
On Zendikar, vampires are more common, living creatures rather than undead and immune to sunlight. They do have a blood lust, though: several vampires get more powerful when an opponent is at 10 life or less. Interestingly, the method for turning is a slight variation on the normal variety. On Zendikar, only specific vampires (called Bloodchiefs) can create other vampires. The rest create zombies, referred to as nulls (and a vampire family's status is apparently related to the number of nulls it has). The original Bloodchiefs are the result of humans infected by the Eldrazi long ago, who created them to be living weapons. When the Eldrazi returned, they sought to control the vampires again; some submitted, becoming mindless pawns in the conquest of Zendikar, while others resisted and joined the fight against their former masters.
An interesting method of turning would be that of Crovax. His method of transmission? Glass shards that embedded themselves into his skin resulting from a curse after killing his former guardian angel.
The vampires of Mirrodin are exceedingly different, sucking blood through two giant claws on each hand.
On Innistrad, vampires were created through consumption of angel's blood by the progenitor Edgar Markov. They are not technically undead, but apart from that share most of the common vampire traits. They behave in an aristocratic manner, can "turn" their victims by feeding them their blood, can be repelled by the holy symbol of the archangel Avacyn, etc...
One of black's most well-known characters, the planeswalker Sorin Markov (grandson of the aforementioned Edgar Markov), is also a vampire. Apart from the pre-Time Spiral planeswalkers and Nicol Bolas, he is the oldest planeswalker and one of the most powerful. Most traditional vampire weaknesses probably don't even apply to him any more, notably because he created Avacyn himself so that vampires would not wipe out humanity entirely.
On Kaladesh, some members of the Aetherborn race have the ability to drain life energy to extend their naturally short lives, and are considered vampires by the game mechanics.
On Arcavios, vampires are found as Strixhaven students and staff in white-lack Silverquill College (which focuses on rhetoric) and black-green Witherbloom College (which focuses on the science of vitality manipulation). The latter is home to some of the only vampires in the game aligned with green mana.
Night's Black Agents is a game that presupposes your characters, all veterans of the intelligence trade, learn they were not working for a specific state interest, but to further the unknowable machinations of vampires. Beyond that, however, the game is very flexible on what kind of vampire, with four base origins involved — Supernatural (mystical but not necessarily evil origin), Infernal (explicitly demonic origin), Mutant (human subspecies), or Alien (inhuman species). From there, the game offers various powers, regenerative techniques, feeding methods, and propagation methods, all with suggestions on which is best suited for which origin. In The Dracula Dossier, a campaign book, an alternate build for Bram Stoker-type vampires is the "Telluric vampire". Telluric vampirism is the result of infection with a form of bacteria that normally thrives deep within the earth, but can be forced to the surface via volcanic or tectonic activity.
In Nomine: Vampires are undead created when a ritual meant to make 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.
Orbis Aerden Reign Of The Accursed: The Accursed Godspawn are the half undead descendants of a fallen god, technically making them Demigods. They are created when a Godspawn drains a human of their blood and then feeds them some of it's own. The divine blood resurrects the person as a creature that feeds on blood (or Haema as they call it) and bursts into flame in sunlight. All Godspawn can use Haema to boost their physical abilities beyond human limits but each bloodline has its own range special powers that can defy the laws of reality and allow a kind of shapeshifting.
The Vorkai have the most control over blood itself, at the cost of needing to feed on more of it. They can use this to make an enemy's blood burst from their skin, and form weapons or other constructs from it.
Udernah have a strong connection to the spirit world. Allowing them to summon and controls ghosts, but also the ability to manipulate time to a limited degree.
Rzaurese can reshape their bodies to become the ultimate warriors or assasins, and can gain someone's knowledge and memories by consuming their flesh.
Because they need to feed on both blood and fear, the Jacaerh can inflict nightmarish hallucinations and even bring a victim's fear to life.
Naihil are the most in touch with their humanity. Giving them the ability to incite powerful emotions in others and use their negative feeling about their condition to transform into a terrifying embodiment of their insanity.
Noctern have increased intelligence and a form blood alchemy that lets them transform themselves or the physical world around them. They use this to create and use electricity as a weapon or change the physical properties of matter. Like making themselves into a gaseous fog, or ground to suddenly shoot out spikes.
Ydrebel gather into packs with a psuedo-hivemind and have the ability to emulate spiders and control insects.
The Faustahd have inherent Necromancy allowing them to create undead servants or steal the life force of the area around.
Originating from Aerden's version of Asia, the Daishun-Tei gain strength and sword skills by adhering to the Bushido-esque code of conduct hard coded into their blood.
The Sauveros tend to be weakest Godspawn, their powers mainly focused on creating illusions and fooling the sense. But they can enter into pacts with the SempiternalArchae, granting Lovcraftian Superpowers.
The game has several distinct breeds of vampires. The moroi are the classic "noble" vampires, capable of summoning bats, rats, and wolves, or transforming into mist. Nosferatu are old and primal vampires that can transform into swarms of insects, burdened by their failing undeath. Jian-shi are Chinese Vampires that drink the breath of the living and move with a stiff hopping gait. Vetala are vampires that evolved past feeding on the bodies of the living, subsisting by consuming the mental energies of their victims.
Psychic vampires, sometimes called vetalaranas due to a passing similarity with true vetalas, are the undead forms of psychic casters who refused to accept their deaths and linger on as unliving husks who feed on the magical potential of other beings.
Iffdahsil, the most feared and ancient denizen of an irradiated desert in a giant cavern far underground, is a vampiric shoggoth. How that happened and how it feeds given its constantly shifting biology are questions most don't live to investigate.
Vampires are the spawn and avatars of huge, multi-tentacled Eldritch Abominations called Vampire Intelligences, and are not the people they were in life, but a shard of the Vampire Intelligence animating them. They come in three levels: The Master Vampire, who makes a Deal with the Devil 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 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 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' 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 when the Demonic Possession doesn't take and is actually animated by the soul of their living self. 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. They are the playable vampires in the setting, as they retain their living conscience and are usually understandably pissed about how they were treated by their progenitors.
Vampires in Rifts can actually cross water if they are "sleeping" at the time, or restrained in some way. If they are awake, they will feel extreme discomfort or even pain, as well as an overwhelming desire to get somewhere dry.
This may make it seem that Palladium vampires are weak, but keep in mind that in Rifts at least, they're capable of laughing off the entire arsenal of a tank or Humongous Mecha while tearing it apart with their bare hands. Anything not listed above can't even scratch them (no, not even a nuke). If you are prepared to fight Vampires, you stand a good chance. If not, you're most likely screwed.
In Glorantha, vampires are devouts of the cursed chaos god Vivamort. Being a worshipper is almost compulsory for becoming a vampire in the first place. Apart from this detail, the vampires in the setting are actually extremely close to the traditional Victorian vampire mould. For example, sunlight does no direct harm to them, but it robs them of most of their powers, and since they must rest 12 hours every day in their coffin, it's simply more natural for them to be nocturnal.
Vampires are human sufferers of Human-Metahuman Vampiric Virus (HMHVV) class I. They require a blood-only diet, are severely allergic to sunlight due to the virus responding poorly to UV radiation, and suffer a continually depleting Essence, which they replenish by attacking sapient, sentient life (i.e. other metahumans). Most of the various vampire powers come from the fact that vampires are naturally magical and can use magic untrained as well as most mages. Being essentially rapists of the soul, there are no Friendly Neighborhood Vampires in Shadowrun, they will at best be Affably or Pragmatically Evil — which means they are more common as shadowrunners than you'd think.
The same strain of the virus turns elves into psychic vampire "banshees", while the variants formed from dwarves (goblins), orks (Wendigo), trolls (dzoo-noo-qua), and sasquatches (jabberwocks) all regain Essence by eating fresh metahuman flesh.
A distinct strain of the virus turns humans into nosferatus, creatures largely similar to vampires but with little to no body hair, pale skin and a lower need for blood intake. They're highly solitary and coldly rational beings, and their lower dependency on feeding allows them to lay low more easily than true vampires can. They deeply dislike spreading their condition, as they view themselves as privileged for having it and prefer to keep it an exclusive thing, but show a preference for transforming their siblings' children when they choose to make more of their kind. They're also powerful mages, although it's unclear whether one needs to be a mage to begin with to survive the transformation or whether transforming into a nosferatu awakens magical potential in the victim.
The blood of HMHVV infectees contains a highly addictive chemical substance that can reduce normal metahumans into pawns of the ones who give them their fix; such addicts are typically referred to as vampiric pawns, Igors or Renfields. Vampires and nosferatus are the most likely to create such pawns, but the practice has become increasingly popular among wendigos as well.
The Eternal in Spears of the Dawn have no specific weaknesses or vulnerabilities at all. They already died once and can't be killed again by any means. But even though they need no food, water, sleep, or even air and do not bleed when stabbed, they also lack the ability to heal any kind of injury normally. Every small scrape or cut adds up and the sun and sandstorms take a heavy toll on their skin. The only way to restore their undying bodies to full health is by feeding on human flesh. Some voluntarily hide away in sealed crypts and sleep away the decades to minimize any wear and damage to their bodies but most have very little reservations against feeding on the living. The only way to stop an Eternal is to break their bones or chop off their arms and legs. Crushing the head makes them unable to feed and restore their bodies ever again, but it still doesn't kill them.
The Vampiress player character can treat her followers like portable health potions by sacrificing them to heal herself. She can also charm the followers of other players, and is one of the more durable character choices (reflected by having a higher starting life value than most other player characters.)
The vampire prince and vampiric dragon enemies drain the life of one of a defeated player's followers (thereby killing the follower.) If no follower is available, the enemies will take an additional life token from the defeated player character instead.
The lord of the Vampire's Tower board space demands a blood toll of any player character attempting to cross the space on their way to the Crown of Command in the inner region. This toll can be paid either by removing some of the character's life tokens, or sacrificing one or more of the player's followers.
Solo RPG Thousand-Year-Old Vampire has a lot of flexibility among its vampires, but it sets a few strongly encouraged patterns: for maximum harmony with the game's themes, a vampire should prey on humans for sustenance, seek to camouflage itself among humans, have some semblance of human needs, be susceptible to environmental conditions that don't hurt humans (such as sunlight), be practically immortal, and live a mostly solitary existence (Vampire: The Masquerade-style vampire societies aren't really how the game is geared). All vampires have at least one Mark of their nature, often several; some of the Marks suggested include reversed hands, the stubs of batlike wings, hypnotic eyes, the shadow of a jaguar under moonlight, a broken neck that will never heal and forces them to take steps to conceal it, and so on. Of note, the entire game is about The Fog of Ages; vampires can't hold an infinite amount of memory, and so they will tend to gradually redefine themselves and lose and gain identities over time - a vampire might well end up forgetting their mortal life entirely.
Regular vampires are a parody of vampire cliches, and live on Dungeonworld, where they are all Counts or Countesses. They are vulnerable to all the usual things plus dance music, can transform into wolves, bats, mist or kumquats, and can only cross running water on Tuesdays. They also all have hypnosis powers, funny accents and always wear evening dress. They drink the blood of the living, or sometimes grape soda.
Hampires are specifically a parody of Vampire: The Masquerade's Kindred, and live on It's a Dark World After All®, where they are divided into multiple feuding clans and feed on the ink of the living. Those fed on by a hampire lose their colour and may become hampires themselves, if the hampire wishes it, through the Hug. Not only do newly-littered hampires become ink-drinking un-Fallen Down, they also gradually become Funny Animal pigs. Unless they're already funny animal pigs, obviously.
In Unhallowed Metropolis, feral vampires with mere animal cunning instead of reasoning intellect are the majority. Sapient vampires are a growing minority, however, due to the phenomenon of Legacies — a sapient vampire is more likely to create another sapient vampire, that sapient vampire is even more likely to create a sapient vampire, and so on. No matter how long the Legacy, there's never more than a 60% chance of a vampire creating a sapient vampire. Infection is spread through exchange of bodily fluids, but is rare under ordinary circumstances — there's only a 1% chance of it on each instance of transfer. Large, deliberate transfers of bodily fluids, such as a victim being fed a quantity of the vampire's blood, drastically increase the chances to one in ten. Unless the disease is diagnosed and treated with a complete blood transfusion within a week of initial infection, the infected will never be human again — those who die of the disease become vampires, while those who survive become dhampiri. Vampires can be killed by enough normal injury, but it takes a large amount of very severe wounds to do so — one such wound is enough to kill anything remotely human outright, regardless of where it's sustained, and even the frailest vampire requires three such wounds to the torso to take down in this manner; similar wounds to limbs will destroy them but not do any significant harm to the vampire's continued existence. Any sufficiently dire wound to the head or heart will destroy the vampire, as will outright decapitating them or removing their heart. A wooden stake to the heart will only kill under the same circumstances as any other damage to the heart, but a lesser wound that still manages to stake them will paralyze the vampire. Vampires are not actually harmed by sunlight, but it is uncomfortable to the point of being debilitating — being out in one of the rare instances of direct sunlight in Neo-Victorian London virtually cripples a vampire, while even being out in the typical overcast weather severely hampers them. Sentient vampires have mind control abilities, are destructively passionate and intense in their emotions, and are almost invariably twisted sadomasochists who have difficulty not killing someone who shows pain or fear. Somewhat unusually for a serious modern portrayal, the vampires here actually are averse to garlic. Not to the point that waving around a clove will protect you if one wants to kill you, but they find the smell incredibly unpleasant and avoid even being in the same room with it if possible. And for extra fun, this is just the type primarily found in England. There are various other types, and the Continent is virtually overrun with countless types of vampires with varying abilities and weaknesses.
Vampires are vulnerable to sunlight and fire as a whole, and various factors have led to the species 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 are between the vampire itself and the First Vampire, Caine. This trait is set in stone at siring, but a vampire can strengthen its blood and close the generational gap... by draining the blood of another vampire and eating its soul, an act so common that it has its own name: diablerie.
The Kuei-jin of Kindred of the East are a completely different type of creature altogether. Where Western vampires make more of their kind by transforming mortals, the Kuei-jin are damned souls who managed to fight their way out of the Thousand Hells and back into their bodies. They're still vulnerable to fire and sunlight. They have no clans, instead pursuing "dharmas", paths to enlightenment; the further they progress, the stronger and more potent they become. Rather than feeding on blood per se, they feed on the Chi (life-force) within it, and as they become more enlightened can learn to draw it from breath, then from the very world around them. They possess their own set of disciplines. Wooden stakes will paralyze vampires aspected to Yin, and metal ones vampires aspected to Yang, but vampires whose Yin and Yang are balanced will merely be hurt.
The Drowned Legacies of South America may be descended from Caine, or they may be something different that currently emulates Western vampires; even their neonates don't know the truth.
On that note, a recurrent idea through Masquerade (although not as prominent as in Requiem) is that some clans and bloodlines might have non-Caine origins, but are for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from other vampires. How true this might be depends on the example in question, whether it's presented as truth or as part of a Multiple-Choice Past.
It repeats the general idea of vampires from Masquerade, though it winnows them down into only five Clans instead of thirteen. Furthermore, each Clan can spawn any number of Bloodlines, which further mold the vampire in new and unique ways. For example, one Bloodline can only truly draw sustenance by drinking from people using drugs, another can only Embrace women, one becomes increasingly obese as it ages, etcetera. In one particular splatbook, Night Horrors: The Wicked Dead, an In-Universe vampire scientist theorises that, rather than the different clans being subspecies of the main vampire race, they're entirely different creatures who have just enough in common to seem that way at a first glance, making it Our Vampires Are Different... From Each Other.
The basic idea is that each of the five clans represents one archetypical vampire, which is reflected in their favored Disciplines, weaknesses, etc.
Daeva are "Vampires Are Sex Gods", with powers emphasizing their sheer carnality and charisma note Majesty to ensnare the attention & love of mortals, Celerity as an encapsulation of their supernatural grace, and Vigor to truly render mortals into nothing but toys but with minds that are clouded by their own carnality note penalized for resisting their Vices in 1e, risk becoming obsessed if they drink from a person more than once in 2e.
Gangrel are "vampires as alpha predators", with powers that support that role note Animalism to support the "lord of all beasts" aspect, Protean to make them deadlier predators, and Resilience to show how they cannot be stopped but at the cost of being mentally more beast than mortal note penalty to Intelligence and Wits checks in 1e, more vulnerable to Frenzy in 2e.
Mekhet are "vampires as shadowy, watching horrors", with powers that make them excellent spies note Auspex to learn things that no human could, Celerity to get out of danger quickly, and Obfuscate to hide in plain sight but bodies that are even more bound to darkness than usual for vampires note extra damage from fire & sunlight in 1e, weaker against sunlight and suffer a free Bane in 2e.
Nosferatu are "vampires as unnatural, unearthly terrors", whose powers emphasize their frightful nature note Nightmare lets them literally scare you to death, Obfuscate means they can be anywhere or anyone, Vigor means they can tear you limb from limb without even trying but who alienate others even when they don't want to note penalties to social interactions, with mechanics differing between editions.
Ventrue are the standard "vampires as Dark Lords of the Night" archetype, giving them access to the "controlling" Disciplines note Dominate, to enforce the obedience of mortals, Animalism, to show that even beasts obey them, and Resilience, to emphasize their unfailing, unending reign but making their grip on humanity more tenuous note greater risk of madness from Degeneration in 1e, less value from Touchstones in 2e, and their Julii ancestors/relatives in 1e were more likely to fail Degeneration checks.
The game also has vampiric creatures with little resemblance to the clans, things outside their framework, and details them in the previously mentioned Night Horrors: The Wicked Dead. These include the Aswang (several different varieties of shapechanging blood-drinking monster from the Philippines, who can walk in daylight and often don't even recognize they are vampiric creatures), the Bhuta (a demonic ghost who murders "warriors", which in the present day includes people like police officers and firefighters, to feed on their time), the Formosae (grotesquely obese mock-vampires who drain the fat and ugliness from their victims along with their lifeforce), the Mnemovores (memory vampires), the Ghuls (corpse-eating immortals), Cymothoa Sanguinaria (a particularly nasty human parasite), and more besides.
Incidentally, both games take the rib cage into account — staking a vampire through the heart in combat (in other words, when they're awake and your remaining lifespan is limited) requires a miraculous degree of luck on one's dice rolls.
The Vampire games also have an example of complicating the matter of propagation. A human who is to be turned must be drained of blood until dead, then the vampire must immediately feed the empowered blood from its own system to the victim. Vampire: the Requiem additionally added the requirement that the sire expend a permanent point of Willpower in the process, to impart the necessary vital spark and stop the blood going inert as it does shortly after leaving the vampire's body (as well as to prevent players from "embracing" hordes of vampires willy-nilly). The aforementioned "Mass Embrace" rule is due to that tactic being one of the Sabbat's nastier tricks in oWoD. Take a bunch of poor bastards, kill them, feed them blood. Then tell them jack shit, and point them at something to use their newfound vitality on. This rarely goes well for the Fledgelings, but the point is entirely based around quick shock-troops, not new long-term members. Later books in Requiem show what happens when you spend a temporary Willpower instead of a permanent one - you make a Larva, a mindless, blood-thirsty rage zombie that will only gain sapience if it diablerizes another vampire or somehow survives for 50 years. Again, good for shock troops, but...
Requiem 2e tweaks things further with the existence of posthumous embraces and Revenants. The former, something adapted from the 1e Mekhet splatbook, means that a person who has drunk vampire vitae in life can spontaneously become a vampire if their body is touched by vampire vitae within a week of their death. This creates what is functionally a normal vampire, although with some prejudice (in contrast to 1e's Hollow Mekhet, who suffered an Enemy Without). Revenants, meanwhile, spontaneously occur when either a human is drained to death by a particularly inhuman vampire's bite or a ghoul with a particularly powerful regnant dies; the result is a sterile "half-vampire", who has certain vampiric traits, but is considerably weaker, and ravenously hungry. Revenants can become true vampires by either being "adopted" by a vampire or through diablerie.
Another difference to Masquerade is that rather than having power set by Generation, vampire "Blood Potency" increases with age, one stage for every fifty years of unlife. Diablerie still allows one to accelerate the process. However, thickening blood is a case of Power at a Price; the vampire can use its abilities to much higher levels and more effectively, but it also becomes 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.
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.
In the main strategy game, 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.
The Von Carsteins are the classic Dracula-style vampires who live in haunted castles and plot to take over the world. They descend from Vlad von Carstein, formerly Vashanesh of Nehekhara and Neferata's first husband, and his later bride Isabella von Drak, whom he married after settling in Sylvania.
The Lahmians are classic Carmilla-styleFemme Fatales who secretly do run the world through spies and agents. They descend directly from Queen Neferata herself.
The Blood Dragons are battle-lovingMonster Knights and some of the deadliest cavalrymen in the world. They descend from Abhorash, an ancient warrior from Lahmia.
The Strigoi are ghoulish, bestial and savage monsters in appearance and ability, but descend from intelligent, benevolent rulers. They were first sired by Ushoran, Neferata's younger brother, and established a great kingdom after Lahmia's fall, but the jealous Neferata set the other vampire bloodlines against them and sent orc and human armies against Strygos, destroying it and forcing the Strigoi into hiding and leading to their eventual degeneration into their current state.
The Necrarchs are reclusive Mad Scientistnecromancers who rely on Black Magic as much as blood to sustain themselves, which has the side effect of making them so hideous that Looks Like Orlok would be an improvement. They descend from W'soran the Wicked, High Priest of Lahmia and Neferata's mentor. They assembled a great library of magic, but most of their kind died within it when mortal mobs burned it to the ground.
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.
The latest army book has dropped the separate bloodlines, allowing aspects of each to be combined in a single vampire, although the list of powers is still divided by the themes of the bloodlines.
In the latest Vampire Counts armybook, there is a section about the various mythical weaknesses of vampires and explanations on why some of them might work and why others are just myths.
There are two distinct types of vampires that have degenerated into effectively mindless, batlike beasts. Vargheists are the result of a vampire being trapped inside a stone coffin until they go insane, eventually turning into a gaunt, pale-skinned monster whose arms have turned into giant webbed wings; Varghulfs are vamps who give in to their bloodlust and revert into mindless predators that look like giant, flightless bats the size of tanks, and capable of a solid turn of speed when running on all fours.
1st Edition material describes vampires as an alien race resembling man-sized, humanoid bats capable of altering their shape to blend in with other creatures. They feed by directly leeching life force from other beings, have Psychic Powers, and are driven to infiltrate alien societies and place themselves in positions of power. Those that they completely drain of vitality become shambling zombies under the vampire's control.
The Dark Eldar always had some vampiric characteristics, but their 5th Edition codex combines being pale-skinned, soul-eating predators with the vilest elements of The Fair Folk.
The Blood Angels are usually depicted with some implicit vampiric trappings — especially regarding half of their Flaw, the Red Thirst, which gives them an insatiable thirst for blood and causes them to fight more savagely and recklessly the longer it goes unfulfilled.
WitchCraft: Vampyres are humans who (either by another vampyre or by their own will) refused to Move On and forced their body back to life. Now unable to produce their own essence they are forced to drain it from others by feeding off extreme emotions. Most do this by physically attacking people and feeding on the resulting fear. But it is possible for them to non-fatally feed by inducing other emotions.
become what they are by consuming great amounts of a substance made of blood and silver called Blood Sterlings, and maintain this state by consuming human blood. Blood sterlings are used as currency in the setting, meaning that only the rich can become vampires. The vampire can become human again by simply not consuming blood, and vampirism is not contageous. In other words, vampires are rich people who voluntarily become bloodthirsty parasites that prey on the small folk. Have we mentioned that Eat the Rich is a major theme of the game?