Vampire Clan Brainstorming

[Tondollari]

I'm really new here, so I'm not sure how much of this has been discussed already. Please bear with me if I show ignorance of existent planning. I understand that there may be vampires in mainstream Dres society, but this does not concern them.

On Vvardenfell, vampire factions show a severe lack of planning. All of them are incredibly isolated, and each clan has a unified class and racial makeup: Aundae (All Altmer, mages); Berne (All Imperial, assassins); and Quarra (Almost all Nord, warriors). I suppose they could be extensions of clans outside Morrowind, stowing away on boats to Vvardenfell like rats with the influx of outlander frontiersmen. I doubt, however, that even this much thought was put into them before plopping them into random dungeons.

With this mess, I think it's best to ignore vanilla clans entirely. We should also ask ourselves if we want to include joinable vampire clans in TR at all.

If we do include joinable vampire clans, I think we need to include them in regional planning, on the same level as settlements, and not just add them in later. Interiors should be designed with them in mind. They should have an economy, just like settlements. If they have cattle, we should think about how they feed them. If they don't, we should know where they get their blood or life force. They should be NPC'd with the same detail as nearby towns.

We should also think about how a player joins a clan. In vanilla, you can get it randomly from fighting/touching them, but the chances of getting it are low. As such the usual process for players is:

1.) Find a clan's cave and kill the most useless vampire (which you found on a wiki).
2.) Drink a "weakness to common disease" potion if you're resistant to disease (which is very likely).
3.) Examine its corpse a bunch of times until you get the disease.

This process breaks immersion and is not good for roleplaying; only a specific kind of weirdo character would do this stuff to begin with. TR needs a better way.

In summary, joinable vampire clans: Do we even want them and, if so, where do we put them and how do we join them?

[Thrignar Fraxix]

I am not 100% certain that it is even possible to add new vampire clans that would function as the clans did in vanilla. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Tondollari]

AFAIK vanilla vampires are just special factions with a unique fortifying spell for each bloodline. They're scripted not to attack you if you share the bloodline (spell) and treat you based on your rank in the faction. I don't think any of this is unimplementable.

[DestinedToDie]

One thing is or certain. If we ever do vamp quests, at least some vampire clan has to be the most evil fuckers the player has seen.

I like your idea about making joining a clan different than in Vvardenfel.

Personally I don't like the idea of vampire quests. Being a vamp is too restrictive and you only get to join 1 clan.

[rot]

Vampire clans have always been vaguely wanted, first as enemies and eventually as joinable clans, but I think that's because their questlines can be assumed to be largely obscure and somewhat minimalistic (= not requiring too much work, and not as detailed as 'civilian' faction NPCs).

It's possible to tweak the way vampirism is contracted (giving their spells a chance to infect) or offer ways to get turned (by talking to certain vampires? I remember at least one Vv boss offers the opportunity. Also I think you can infect yourself using items from each clan) but there shouldn't be a clear, obvious way for a clueless player to become a vampire - it's designed to happen as an accidental event. And

In vanilla, you can get it randomly from fighting/touching them, but the chances of getting it are low. As such the usual process for players is:

1.) Find a clan's cave and kill the most useless vampire (which you found on a wiki).

Not at all - vampirism (w/ clan blood specificity) can be contracted from any vampire, save a couple exceptions. The way this goes is you contract it randomly from any of them, not necessarily a named one from the clan - and I've personally found there's a very fair chance of that happening from fighting random vampires. The guide-dang-it part would be figuring out that there is a faction, and where the clan elders are (and it seems they'd be the ones belonging to a specific race). The first part the player already knows, the second can be handled by giving directions from the then-non agressive vampires (don't know if vanilla does it but I'm guessing not)

I am not 100% certain that it is even possible to add new vampire clans that would function as the clans did in vanilla. Please correct me if I am wrong.

It is possible and trivial, since vanilla clans function purely on the basic disease mechanism + a couple of scripts.
(the only thing I'm not sure about is the player's vampire face, but if it's hard-coded it's probably to the 'basic vampire package')

[Gnomey]

I do think we ought to have vampires, and also think we should go beyond what vanilla Morrowind offers as far as vampire gameplay is concerned.
One way to do so would be to give vampire clans more in-depth faction questlines than the two-and-a-half per clan in vanilla Morrowind.
Another route would be to have several quests only available to vampires or that play out differently for vampires. I'd assume these would be rather frequent in Telvannis.
Is there any other method, for example one that doesn't rely on quests, to provide good vampire gameplay?

While not providing gameplay per se, I think giving the vampire clans on the mainland new powers and abilities as opposed to simple stat boosts would already make things more interesting, both as far as playing a vampire is concerned as well as for fighting vampire NPCs.
For example one clan based in the Armun Ashlands might get passive bonuses while in an ash storm, such as increased speed, detect life and maybe some level of chameleon. Another clan might have a special control humanoid spell which allows the controlled NPC to gather life-force for the vampire in combat. While it would probably be harder to script, maybe another clan has something like a blink spell allowing vampires to teleport/jump behind their opponents.

[rot]

New powers/abilities are really the point of having distinct vampire clans. Always imagined the vampires around Dun Akafel/Meph mountains to be really good at 'jumping' (cheesy B movie style), because that'd make them fun ennemies too. I'll make an example script for that sometime

Bonuses in ashstorms are doable and interesting, but where would they apply in the Mainland?

special control humanoid spell which allows the controlled NPC to gather life-force for the vampire in combat. While it would probably be harder to script, maybe another clan has something like a blink spell allowing vampires to teleport/jump behind their opponents.

Neither of these are possible for the player with the MW engine. OpenMW...~
(should be somewhat feasible for enemies though, as a placeholder)

Is there any other method, for example one that doesn't rely on quests, to provide good vampire gameplay?

There are several popular mods that adress vampire gameplay. TR should ideally be compatible with them (or rather, not make it impossible for them to patch for TR), but gameplay changes aren't the current scope of TR, especially since playing as a vampire is more of a bonus feature that turns the mod into a sandbox (with few quests available), and not a main way to play the mod.

[Gnomey]

Bonuses in ashstorms are doable and interesting, but where would they apply in the Mainland?

That would depend largely on what the final regional weather settings will be for TR's regions. The Armun Ashlands would be the obvious example. Were we planning to have ashstorms in the Ash Swamp? Regions bordering ashlands might also have a really low chance of ashstorms, if the dividing border is low enough. I'm not sure if any ashy areas were planned for Telvannis, Map 6 or, for that matter, how the situation will end up looking in Indoril lands. Then there are the ashstorms in Mournhold. Could be fun.
The idea would really work with any weather type or types, for example fog or snow-and-blizzards, but ashstorms are ideal due to being iconic for Morrowind.

Neither of these are possible for the player with the MW engine. OpenMW...~
(should be somewhat feasible for enemies though, as a placeholder)

There might be ways to approximate the effects, for example for the latter some application of the ForceMoveJump and/or ForceRun functions along with a short-term speed boost might do the trick. I can easily see those specific examples being too troublesome to bother with, though.

There are several popular mods that adress vampire gameplay. TR should ideally be compatible with them (or rather, not make it impossible for them to patch for TR), but gameplay changes aren't the current scope of TR, especially since playing as a vampire is more of a bonus feature that turns the mod into a sandbox (with few quests available), and not a main way to play the mod.

While not ideal, I would certainly be fine with that. I think if we have some interesting clan abilities, perhaps a bit of nice dialogue and maybe a few vampire-related quests we will already be giving the player a fun diversion, at the very least.
But when I was talking about gameplay I was referring to things like quests that could keep vampire players entertained. For example introducing a low chance that the player will actually experience one of the vampire dreams in-game. (Trying to do the text descriptions of the dreams justice in-game would probably require a ridiculous amount of work, that's just an example).
House Dres, when it is made, might provide a new gameplay experience to vampire players, for example. It may allow vampire players to interact with a House in a fairly in-depth manner, perhaps with some content only available to vampires, and it might also present vampire NPCs in a new environment, and with a different 'culture' from other vampire clans.

[Tondollari]

I have an idea for a clan in the Inlet Bog, called the Voralith Clan. First a bit of backstory.

Centuries ago, there was a War Ordinator, family name of Voralith, who was part of an expedition to exterminate a vampire clan somewhere near or in the Argon Jungle. His party successfully undertook the mission, but succumbed to disease and starvation on the arduous journey back to Almalexia. He, the last surviving member, was also diseased, but with vampirism. He knew this, but found himself unable to commit suicide as expected of him. After spending days and nights isolated and on the brink of death, he became a vampire.

He has since become a huge blemish on the Ordinator class. When his fate first became known, three generations of his family backwards and forwards were executed because of his unthinkable sin. Currently, there is no Voralith family, and very few people know about this secret history, mostly Indoril and maybe an Imperial scholar or two.

Voralith still lives, with an extended family, in Baan Urlai, a stronghold magically concealed underneath Talmahre Cavern. His clan's bloodline has a powerful poison ability.

Talmahre Cavern is on the border of Inlet Bog Territory, not very far from civilization, but the way to Baan Urlai is incredibly well-hidden (In Talmahre Cavern, there's a tiny button you have to press in the firepit with mushrooms growing out of it). Finding and killing Voralith could be a late Indoril quest, where rumors place him near Talmahre Cavern. A non-Indoril finding the clan would likely involve notes left by splinter clan-members.