It’s Vampire Weekend! So I’m going to talk about what I want out of a classic vampire villain.

For the purposes of this, I’m interested in the vampire that is a fun antagonist to my players. There are other types of vampires worth exploring — I’ve written one myself in Bridewell — but I’m starting writing this waiting in a pharmacy (and finished, in a strange time-twist, in a medical wait room), so I don’t have time today to do comprehensive taxonomy of vampires. I’ll leave that to Dwiz.

The vampire I want to talk about is a videogame villain vampire. This VVV doesn’t act like a real person, or at least, you don’t start with the reality of their psychology as a starting point. They are a character that you get to know throughout the adventure or campaign, not during a boss fight at the end. This is why the VVV has all of these weird and wonderful powers of regeneration and shape change and what not. They need to be present the whole time. How do you make this invincible GMPC into someone who isn’t infuriating for the players?

Firstly, the VVV needs to be introduced immediately, and be somewhat charming. the players must love to hate them. How do we manufacture this? Look at TV and books to be honest. They need to be hot, they need to be flawed, and they need to be witty. The VVV is not ambiguous, you’re never going to be their friend. But they’re fun to have around, a constant foil. Think Q, of Star Trek, but not quite so all-powerful.

You meet them early, and non-violently, and here they’re inviting or welcoming you into their lair. The welcome doesn’t have to be open arms, of course: This is where you learn you’ve started playing their game. You encounter them or their proxies regularly. You see their visage in speaking pictures. Their bats and rats spy on you as security cameras and bring you clues when you struggle, to encourage you to take risks. They’re a benevolent referee analogue, in a way, but the traps they’re laying are difficult and dangerous and unforgiving to balance out the help they provide you in overcoming them. You’re the entertainment, they don’t want you to croak early.

The hardest thing about the VVV is that what happens at the end? You don’t want a combat, they’re nigh invincible in their domain, that’s why they’re toying with you. No, they might be invincible and clever, but they’re arrogant and not as clever as they think, or at least arrogant enough not to put up enough defences. They don’t clean up after themselves. Wondering through their lair, they leave clues as to their weaknesses, how they can be bribed or threatened. They leave shrines to the heroes that got this far that might indicate what they missed. They might even have visages or menageries of those doomed heroes, who want you to succeed, on your way. If you get through to their throne room, which is no doubt filled with magma and gothic statuary, that is animated and filled with smouldering skeletons, you’re accidentally equipped with the tools to hold them to ransom enough to gain your goal or at least to escape. I have a soft spot for the point scoring in tournament modules, as I read too many of them for my irregular podcast, Dungeon Regular. And here, I could see the player characters getting a score according to how much leverage they gain on the VVV, which determines exactly how much they get from the VVV at the end. But there are other ways to manage this — a flowchart or something, perhaps.

How do we discourage a final battle, though? Or how do we facilitate one if it’s what we want? Well, it may be impossible to discourage depending on your team, in which case I suggest talking with your table prior and flagging that you cannot defeat this villain, at least this time. Maybe you can come back later. Or, perhaps, feel out whether any of the players might be happy to be made an example of, killed or turned into spawn. Preferably the most competent one. Encouraging a boss battle: Well, we take a different direction then.

What if there are secret passages, or backstage areas, and those areas are filled with the weapons and poisons that affect the VVV? But once you’re noticed off-stage (remember, the bats and rats are omnipresent, but perhaps not off stage until they realise you’ve broken the fourth wall), it’s no longer a friendly game. Can you stay off the radar, finding secrets and keeping them secret until it’s time to spring it in the final room? Or do you build up the VVV’s anger meter, and then they comes after you, with all their hazards and traps at their disposal.

I’d strongly encourage you to make these meters public. Your Leverage the Vampire Score? Public. Your Anger Meter? Public. Scores can be part of the fun. It’s a feedback mechanism. Have the VVV’s baby vampire robots get steam out of their ears or the atmosphere get more oppressive, if you need diegetics. But it is a game we’re playing. You can introduce your own stats.

To wrap this up, the VVV is the main character and the director, they created the rooms, they run the show. The fun of this kind of vampire is subverting their intentions, of breaking the fourth wall of this play your for is directing, where you are the doomed stars. I’d love to see a slew of these vampire-as-dungeon modules, to be honest, because in my opinion, the biggest and most famous example of this falls short.

Let’s get to vampiring.

More Vampire Weekends: Zedeck Siew’s A Perfect Wife, Amanda P’s Temptation & Tyranny, Prismatic Wasteland’s Playing as a Vampire, Josh McRowell’s Untitled, Vampiric Backgrounds. There’s plenty more weekend left, join in!

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