Hi, I could use some advice abvout a palyer converting to a ghost and then to a vampire.
Situation: Our lurk happened to “steal” a hollow in the last session so he had the glorious idea that he could kill himself, hire someone to hide his body and then turn into a ghost, learn the possess ability and take control of the body.
Has anyone here done this before? What were your experiences with a ghost player? How did you handle his turning into a vampire?
To be specific I am unsure about the following aspects:
1. “You may weakly interact with the physical world”. I think I’ll let the player attempt anything he likes but change position and / or effect to represent his weak physical representation (or the fear / panic / felt by humans interacting with him). Will this be enough to represent his ghostliness?
2. The ghost meta game: The goal of the player is to become a vampire. I am afraid that this will mean that his only concern as a ghost will be to get as many XP triggers as possible and this could make the whole ghost part rather boring and pointless. How have you handled this in your sessions?
3. Any general / fun ideas I could use to make his time as a ghost or his conversion to a vampire more interesting / engaging?
4. Should I be concerned about the balancing of a vampire? It seems like he gains a huge amount of stats, especially combined with the 3 free dots of the ghost^^
Cheers and thanks for reading!
Why isn’t the player paying someone to put his spirit directly into the hollow?
Never happened in any of my games.
My first thought is to just ask the player outright what he thinks will be fun. If he’s just looking for a way to become a vampire, then you’re all on the same page. There’s no need to “follow the rules” if they won’t be fun – you could let him create a vampire character from scratch, or have his character get turned into a vampire without going through the ghost stage.
If he wants to play the ghost stage because it’ll be fun, or because he wants to explore the link between ghosts and vampires, then you can talk about what will be fun and brainstorm how it fictionally all works. That discussion will probably give you ideas about how to run things.
To be honest, I’d say suiciding to become a vampire is bad roleplaying. Nobody would ever want to kill themselves unless they had relevant backstory for that.
If relatively normal Lurk steals a Hollow, and then decides “ok I’m gonna commit suicide” then there better be a good story reason for it, or as a GM I’d probably have his body be taken by the wardens.
People in the real world have killed themselves while seeking immortality.
In a world with actual ghosts and vampires, I’d be surprised if there weren’t a lot more people taking risks like that. Because they know the rewards are real.
(There are also probably a lot of con artists selling fake magic and immortality. And even real immortality probably comes with a very high cost.)
But someone willing to die to become a ghost doesn’t seem unrealistic to me.
Enter a demon who appears at or even in his body and offers knowledge of the bloodletting ritual that actually creates a vampire, as opposed to just a ghost possessing a body. Attach strings accordingly.
2. If the player doesn’t want to be a ghost, why have them play through the ghost playbook? Let the human player acquire the knowledge and implements to prepare the hollow for vampirification (through a long, arduous, and dangerous process—there’s a reason people aren’t becoming vampires left and right). Of course, there’s no way to seek the knowledge of vampirism without attracting the attention of people (?) whose attention you don’t want to have (Scurlock, the Wardens, …) => more opportunities for story.
Then you can have a big spotlight when they actually perform the ritual (and remember, they need someone they can trust to perform it, otherwise they’ll just end up dead…) and become a vampire. Skip the ghost playbook.
4. Vampires are more powerful than humans, that’s for sure. You’re right that they gain a lot of action dots. It’s less of a problem if you skip the ghost—however, even if someone were to play through ghost, then vampire, I wouldn’t add the ghost action dots to the vampire ones, I would have the vampire boost replace the ghost boost. They are also described as merciless predators that do not care for the concerns of humans except as servants (“You displayed your dominance or slayed without mercy”) or a source for life essence. Is your player up for that? It’s easy to see the vampire playbook and feel “oh, powerful stuff let me take it”, without realizing the essential misery that’s part of the vampire experience in Blades.
Either way, once you have a vampire in the crew, the crew will attract the ire of other factions who don’t want roaming vampires, such as other vampires, or spirit wardens, or who knows what. The immense power that vampires have comes with a big price in the narrative (but be aware that this is not “balance”, it’s simply following the fiction of vampires).
The troubles of the crew might all start to focus around that vampire player and so they will take away a lot of the spotlight. Is everyone in your crew okay with such a shift in focus? That’s something you should probably be more worried about than the character’s balance.