Summary
Vampires have been popular in the realm of fantasy stories and games for a very long time.Dungeons & Dragonsis no exception, as Vampires have been a part of its history. Whether it’s following a pre-made adventure or a homebrewed one, Vampires are a strong villain and monster to have at your disposal.
But what is the best way for you to include Vampires in your own story? How are Vampires going to enhance your adventures or challenge your players the most? This list holds a number of helpful ideas and prompts for you as you craft your adventure or your next in-game encounter.
8A Vampire BBEG
It’s tried and true for a reason. Making your end-game villain a Vampire can be frightful, even if your players know or see it coming. After all, it’s even included in the D&D Vampire lore that they can create those who follow them.
Being able to create other Vampires can allow you as a Dungeon Master (DM for short) to create an army that serves your Vampire Lord and would fight and die for them. It can prove both a challenge for your players but leaves so much space for you to create the ins and outs of how this happened.
BBEG stands for Big Bad Evil Guy (or Gal). This is typically the main villain your party is trying to overcome.
7A Helpful NPC
Why not flip the script on your players? Instead of making a Vampire who is an evil character, you can instead make them a helpful NPC or at least a neutral one that gives aid as they see fit.
This can cause chaos as your players brace themselves for when the Vampire finally turns on them, leading to comical results. Or they can trust each other because of a common goal. The enemy of my enemy is my friend mentality.
6A Compelling Side Quest
Vampires don’t have to be the main bad guys (using the term without gender implications). They could, instead, be a side story your players dive into. And depending on how you run it, this can have major impacts on the story going forward or be a distraction from current in-game problems.
There are hundreds of reasons you could want to use Vampires in this way. It can even be as simple as wanting to scratch the itch of using Vampires that otherwise weren’t going to be a part of your campaign. Or this can be a way to get players leveled up before returning to a main story arc.
5A Victim Needing Help
Although this can be a side quest as well, a different way to approach this is to make the Vampire the victim. Whether it’s the victim of being turned into one of these creatures or some sort of magic or science experiment, the how and why is completely up to you.
It will be up to your party whether they help this person or not. They can wonder if this person really needs help or is luring them into a trap. They can refuse to help, only to find that it was the wrong choice to make. It all depends on you as the DM and them as the adventurers.
4A Powerful Enchanter
As players explore the world around them, you may find it hard to reliably give them powerful items, whether for quests or for them to use in combat. Why not have a powerful monster be their source of these trinkets and tools?
A Vampire sugar daddy or mommy, if you will. But the sugar is gifting them different artifacts that can help them along on their journey.
Doing something like this, even if this character isn’t a Vampire, can be a helpful way to give items to players who don’t investigate often or rarely remember to loot people they have fought against.
3A Hidden Threat
Now, this could be part of them being the main BBEG or being a pawn of a BBEG, but they can also be a hidden threat all of their own. There are many ways to achieve this.
Is the Vampire a friendfrom a character’s backstorythat they didn’t realize was a monster? Are they a romantic interest for one of your party members? Did they trick the party into believing they were a victim needing help? Some players may catch on, but by then, it could already be too late.
2A Vampiric Child
Oh boy, a young kid that could or could not kill you. It’s the stuff of horror. Do you spare them because of their child-like innocence? Or do you make some hard decisions becauseof their evil nature?
Using a plot like this in a horror campaign can really heighten the intensity, no matter what you decide to do as a DM. You can also let the player’s decision inform what your next actions will be.
1A Vampire And A Player
This will hit close to home, literally. This can be a decision you and a player make together, to let them be a Vampire and either have them reveal that to the party or have it kept a secret until a bad guy ultimately makes it known.
It can also be something that happens to a player in the course of your campaign. They are turned by a Vampire either in the course of combat or throughsome downtime roleplay. Either way, it will make a compelling part of your story and an intense burst of fear and loathing while your players figure out what to do about it.
