Greetings!

I was working on some stuff for my campaigns, and I recalled reading and hearing about how popular weird cults are, witchcraft, and vampires are in our own society.

These kinds of groups are very, very popular in our own culture, currently.

Imagine how much *more* popular they would be, if we were actually living in a fantastic world like D&D where you have D&D magic. Add in all of the witchcraft powers, the vampire powers, cultist's magic, not to mention summoning evil spirits, Imps, and the like, and it seems to me that groups of witches, cultists, and vampires would likely be running wild in any D&D campaign world.

Do you organize and detail your groups of vampires, witches, and cultists? I think I have a good dozen and more such groups in my campaigns. I have several special locations mapped out; some generic stand-in bases; stock NPC's developed for each; as well as some tables developed for their goals, schemes, conflicts, resources, and leadership.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I'm working on ones for urban fantasy. Does that count?

Shadow of the Demon Lord spends a few words on witchcraft, but it's treated as a religion that picked up practices from the faeries without actually worshipping them as divine beings (as the gods of the Old Faith). It never amassed a huge following, so its practitioners are often persecuted by the new hotness (New God) religion for all manner of things. Some of those are true--there are dark and twisted followers of witchcraft--but the greater portion of witches are closer to a benevolent neutral (and some are even what would be considered outright good-goodies).

My vampires are different.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 28, 2022, 07:32:23 AM
I'm working on ones for urban fantasy. Does that count?

You might look at the Night Shift RPG, depending upon what rules set you are trying to use. NS uses rules very similar to those of the original edition of D&D and has some great rules for witches and supernatural creatures and heroes of popular urban fantasy shows. (Buffy, Lost Girl, Supernatural, Charmed, that kind of thing.) I like the fact that I can do modern fantasy without having to re-learn a lot of rules, plus the NS core book has a whole bunch of suggestions for settings which can be run.

Quote from: SHARK on April 27, 2022, 07:23:16 PMImagine how much *more* popular they would be, if we were actually living in a fantastic world like D&D where you have D&D magic. Add in all of the witchcraft powers, the vampire powers, cultist's magic, not to mention summoning evil spirits, Imps, and the like, and it seems to me that groups of witches, cultists, and vampires would likely be running wild in any D&D campaign world.

Not necessarily. Part of the reason such esoteric groups are popular is precisely because of their esotericism and secrecy, the thrill they give their members of being in the small but enlightened Inner Ring (as C.S. Lewis called it). Make those things publicly known and acknowledged and I would guess that half the people who wanted to be in them would immediately turn away in favour of something even more esoteric and secretive.

Then, of course, a world where you had witchcraft, D&D magic and vampires would also probably have objectively provable supernatural realities of the benevolent and divine sort as well, which would restore a great deal of the loss of spiritual faith and confidence which drives seekers to the obscure and esoteric to begin with.

QuoteDo you organize and detail your groups of vampires, witches, and cultists? I think I have a good dozen and more such groups in my campaigns. I have several special locations mapped out; some generic stand-in bases; stock NPC's developed for each; as well as some tables developed for their goals, schemes, conflicts, resources, and leadership.

I certainly created a large cast of characters for the one Vampire campaign I ran, although ironically I think it worked against me because I was so busy juggling the cast that the adventure pace slowed to a crawl, which the players eventually lodged a formal complaint about. The temptation to doing all that creative work is to make the mistake of forcing your players to see all of it.

I counter the "imagine how much more pervasive they would be if the power was real" with...

"Imagine how much more hunted they would be if they were really calling upon evil spirits and attending schools run by Satan?"

Because that's the thing; the postmodernist interpretation of witches and vampires as sympathetic outsiders bears no relation to how such cults, covens and abominations were viewed by the public in the premodern periods.

In the present day with all the modern support systems; being an outsider is seen as something cool and desirable. When your survival depended entirely upon the strength of your connections to the community though... such a lifestyle would only be the realm of misanthropes and similar outcasts and criminals.

That's what witches and vampires and all the other wicked things that go bump in the night represented... exaggerated versions of those too maladjusted to survive in society. Withered crones without families who inflicted illness and misfortune and half dead fiends risen from unhallowed graves to suck the life out of communities.

Make them real instead of just bugbears and cautionary tales and those communities would have even more reason to hunt them down. Imagine the Salem witch trials... only they're RIGHT and so have no reason to ever stop the hunts. Even the Catholic Church (which condemned belief in witchcraft... not the practice, but the belief that witchcraft was even possible) would have orders dedicated to eradicating the soldiers of Satan from the world if they were demonstrably real.

Similarly, I'd imagine faith in general would flourish. Satan couldn't exist without God so communities would probably be even more religious so as to ward off the fiends. Likewise, your faith being effective against the curses and afflictions of the evil powers would be a way to win converts in droves.

Sidebar: it always amused me that in "Dracula" the Protestant protagonists were told they had to use expressly Catholic sacramentals (ex. crucifixes not just crosses) to ward off vampires... and yet not a one of them took the logical next step of even considering "maybe the papists are actually right?"

I suspect if, in the real world, vampires were proven real and only the sacramentals of one particular religion could ward them off... you'd see mass conversions to that religion as its power has been actually demonstrated.

So, that's my take... if they're real they're probably even more hidden and secretive because the forces of the religions whose rituals can oppose them will have a lot of converts and organizations dedicated to hunting them and ending their threat to civilization.

Quote from: finarvyn on April 28, 2022, 03:18:31 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 28, 2022, 07:32:23 AM
I'm working on ones for urban fantasy. Does that count?

You might look at the Night Shift RPG, depending upon what rules set you are trying to use. NS uses rules very similar to those of the original edition of D&D and has some great rules for witches and supernatural creatures and heroes of popular urban fantasy shows. (Buffy, Lost Girl, Supernatural, Charmed, that kind of thing.) I like the fact that I can do modern fantasy without having to re-learn a lot of rules, plus the NS core book has a whole bunch of suggestions for settings which can be run.

Thnx, I already bought the book a while ago.

Quote from: Chris24601 on April 30, 2022, 08:42:25 AM
Sidebar: it always amused me that in "Dracula" the Protestant protagonists were told they had to use expressly Catholic sacramentals (ex. crucifixes not just crosses) to ward off vampires... and yet not a one of them took the logical next step of even considering "maybe the papists are actually right?"

  Harker toys with the possibility while trapped in Dracula's castle, but nothing more is done with it within the text of the novel.