The other day I overheard my coworkers arguing whether or not Vampires are better than Werewolves. I was about to throw in my two cents into this discussion when I realized this was a Twilight discussion. So instead joining in, I asked if the the Werewolfs in Twilight universe also sparkle in the sun. And if not, what is their non-cannon disadvantage trait.
Of course they wouldn’t tell me – I just got the evil eye. But knowing Stephanie Meyer they probably have one. I bet silver doesn’t hurt them but makes them prettier or something.
Anyway, I figured this would be a good idea for a Friday poll. Just keep in mind that we are talking about non-twilight versions of these creatures. Given a choice, would you rather be a Vampire or a Werewolf?
Note that there is no third option. You must make a choice between the two. Given what you know or heard about these beings, which group would you rather pick? Note that I’m not making any definite statements about either group. Assume that the only thing you know for sure is that they don’t work the way Stephanie Meyer thinks they work. Still, you must make a choice based on incomplete knowledge gained from books, movies and games and folklore.
We can probably assume that vampires are immortal, must drink blood and burn to a crisp if exposed to sunlight. Werewolves are probably able to control how and when they shift, though they might be prone to animalistic urges or fits of uncontrollable rage. They also might be vulnerable to silver.
On one hand, Werewolves seem to get a better deal. They get supernatural powers while still being able to go out in the sun, and don’t have to do nasty things to survive. At most they need to avoid eating with silverware and stay home whenever they feel especially emo or annoyed to avoid ripping some asshole apart during a full moon.
Then again Vampires get immortality and that whole mesmerizing thing. Not to mention some of their other mythical powers like flying, shape shifting, changing to mist. So while they pay a greater price, they probably get much more in exchange.
Which would you rather be? Which one would win in a fight? Do the poll, and let me know why you chose one over the other in the comments.
Depends on the power of the individual, a new Werewolf and a new Vampire would be won by the puppy hands down. Once that vampire has had a few hundred years to develop their powers and techniques the outcome would shift in favor of them.
Personally I would choose to be a Werewolf if you’re talking World of Darkness or even Twilight, a Vampire if you’re talking the Ann Rice kind, and neither if you’re looking at traditional mythology.
It seems to me like werewolves have no control over their urges, but vampires have some, so that makes me think being a vampire would be a better choice. But who really wants to live forever? I’d probably also eat humans. Why just drink their blood when so many are fat and juicy now?
Immortality of the kind where you can end your life if you get tired of it pretty much beats everything else in my book. On the werewolf side I have a hard time seeing any benefits at all. At least if they are in as little control over themselves as depicted in typical folklore.
OTOH, Immortality of the type that never ends would truly suck. Imagine drifting around for eternity, all alone, in an infinite dark space after the solar system has collapsed…
Also, when I saw the title in my rss reader I thought this would be another movie review of underworld :)
Honestly, upon seeing the choices the question became more “Would not being in the sun as a vampire really be all that bad?”
I gave it a couple thoughts. I do own a convertible as my only means of transportation, but who says you can’t drive with the top down at night? Plus, immortality… sold.
I’m not sure many chicks would be into an extremely hairy man, either. They might go for charming and pale, but not a dog (well, there was this one video…).
@ Tino: LOL! I had the exact same thought, until I saw “Twilight”. Aww crap!
Wouldn’t a werewolf lose its reasoning ability and be more animal once it shapeshifts into the wolf form? Because of that reason, I would prefer being a Vampire. I would have my powers, yet still maintain my ability to think. I’m already sleeping late at night, and waking up late anyway, so the sun thing won’t bother much.
Since Vampires drink blood, maybe I could only drink the blood of criminals, and kill them after so they themselves don’t turn into one. Vampiric Robin Hood?
You’d think that being smart (or easily able to seduce smart people) and immortal and all, vampire would have figured out what exactly they need in blood and actually get it from a less controversial source. Same goes for sunlight.
Unless vampirism comes with distinct taste for dark places and girls with too much make-up, I’d rather be a vampire than a werewolf. I don’t easily identify with the brutish kind of characters anyway, probably because my own physical strength is not much to speak of.
@ Morghan: Yeah, WoD Werewolves do have an edge over vampires in combat. Then again we did work out certain anti-wolf tactic that requires at least a single dot in Dominate.
When you see a shape shifter charging at you, simply use Dominate to issue a simple one word command: “Puke!”
Seeing how it is probably difficult to both run and puke at the same time, this has a chance to stop the dog in his tracks and give you time to Obfuscate and get the hell out of there.
“Sit, shit and roll” is also funny, but it usually requires 3 vampires issuing Dominate commands in a sequence.
@ Ian G. Clifton: I guess the question here is why Vampires drink blood. In most sources they do not actually do it for the nutritional value but rather it is a way to drain life essence or something similar from their victims. WoD Vampires for example, can’t digest real food. They can eat, but they will have to puke it out at some point, otherwise it will start rotting in their stomach making them sick. I think in Requiem you can actually spend blood points to digest normal food – but it is counter productive – digesting makes you more hungry than not digesting. :P
@ Tino: Dude, that would totally suck. Although, if you live long enough you may witness the big crunch and then the other big bang and creation of a whole new universe. Which may be interesting…
Unless of course the big rip theory is true, in which case you are screwed.
But yea, Vampires can totally end their life at any point – just go out into the sun. :)
In WoD most vampires opt for another alternative – torpor – an uneasy slumber that may last many centuries. It comes with a nice dose of partial amnesia and also bit of insanity – so when you wake up you can start your life from scratch.
@ Square: Technically no. I think the blood drinking and being a monster is what gets to most people first. Lack of sunlight is just an inconvenience compared to that.
Then again you’d probably miss it after a while. You would fondly remember the trips to the beach, working in the garden, walking in the park with your girl, watching the sundown. I mean, we want the things we can’t have the most, so I think this would be quite frustrating eventually. But yeah, you’d probably learn to deal with it.
@ Mart: Hmmm… Robin Hood was not a killer though. Make that Vampiric Dexter.
Of course this begs a question of victim selection? How would you pick who would you want to drink each night? Dexter had a very rigid selection process – the would collect evidence on his victims for weeks, or sometimes months. Also, working for the police, he had easy access to criminal records. You on the other hand, may not be so lucky. So how would you make sure you are only drinking from bad people, and not innocent folks who were falsely accused, or genuinely good kids who fell into a bad crowd?
Also I probably wouldn’t take this route because I don’t think I’d be able to suck on the necks of big, hairy, smelly dudes. I’d rather just pick up some pretty, nice smelling, and probably much tastier girl at a bar or a night club than stock some crack den, or criminal hangout. :P
Also, I personally I subscribe to the theory that a vampire bite can’t turn you. Creating a new vampire must be a conscious act that requires some effort and determination on the part of the sire/maker. Otherwise, Vampires would quickly deplete their food sources.
In WoD for example, to create a vampire you must suck a human dry, and then give him some of your blood. That’s also how it seems to work in Anne Rice’s novels if I remember correctly. So I wouldn’t kill my victims. There would be no need to do it.
Probably a smart thing to do would be to seduce and/or bond bunch of living humans to yourself. They would be your attendants, lovers, employees and etc. Being an awesome vampire would hook them up with awesome vampire stuff (whatever that may be) and they would let you feed on them willingly.
Also, you could probably just pick up a lot of willing donors on the sanguinarian forums, and clubs. I mean there are people out there IRL who do seem to get off on that kind of shit, so they’d probably be thrilled to let you suck on them. As a bonus you probably wouldn’t even need to tell them you are a “real” vampire – they would just assume you are one of the fucked up wanabees just like them. :)
Oh, and there is the blood bank hookup. But that one might be risky, because people tend to track where the blood goes.
@ Zel: Actually, this is what True Blood series on HBO postulates. In the show they develop an artificial blood substitute that can actually nourish vampires. As a result they “come out of the coffin” and reveal their existence to the world.
One problem with this is that most vamps think that the True Blood tastes like shit compared to the real thing. Which I think I can understand.
I mean, you could survive drinking artificial stuff but why would you want to? I mean, would you choose to live off TV dinners, canned stuff or ramen noodles when you could have a gourmet meal at a 5 star restaurant every day? In most sources, the very act of blood drinking is a very sensual, and satisfying in itself.
Also, it could be like that it’s not the blood itself that nourishes the vampire. For example, if I remember correctly, in Vampire the Requiem the blood looses it’s nourishing properties when it is outside of a living body for too long. So vampires can’t really feed on frozen blood packs, or recently deceased. This suggests that there is some metaphysical component at work here. Some life force, energy or whatever.
I think Werewolves are supposed not to be damned. That’s a big plus. And there is the whole eco-warrior mumbo jumbo I like too.
I’m a bit too much of a nature type to be a Vampire, unless you’re talking the Tinkerbell twilight crap, even when I did play a leech in WoD I’d always go Gangrel. Even had one who, through diablerie, managed to gain enough power to walk in the daylight.
@ Alphast: I have bad news for you: the new Werewolf edition pretty much removes the whole eco-warrior stuff. Now shape shifters are supposed to be some sort of border-patrol between the real world and Umbra. The Wyrm and Black Spiral Dancers are mostly gone.
Some people like this new twist, while others hate it. I’m actually thinking it may not be a bad idea, because I always thought that whole eco-focus was too… I don’t know… Captain Planet for my tastes. Then again, I haven’t read the rulebook myself – I’m just going by what I heard and read online.
@ Morghan: Heh, nice! I don’t think this sort of thing would fly with my GM. Diablerie was risky business.
Also, this sort of thing can’t happen in Vampire Requiem. They sort of removed the whole generation thing and replaced it with focus on blood potency. If your potency is to high you can only feed on other vampires. Eventually you will slip into torpor (voluntarily or not) and sleep for a few centuries. As you sleep your blood dilutes and when you wake up you are usually back to the baseline. Also torpor fucks you up psychologically – it’s pretty much like a long nightmare in which you relive parts of your life. When you wake up you usually can’t remember what was real and what was just imagined.
So in Requiem there are no god-like, day walking, ancient Antediluvians sleeping in some forgotten tombs getting ready for Gehenna. Or rather there might be, but when they wake up, they will be just like regular vampires – just old and experienced, though they forgot a lot of things while they were sleeping. Day walking is literally unheard of. The most you can hope for is the ability to walk in the twilight hours during dawn and sunset – and that’s only with the special Ordo Draculi powers.
Diabelerie is still an option, but it does carry a higher price. If you would become so powerful you could walk in daylight, you would probably be only able to feed on equally or only slightly less powerful vampires. Failure to feed would eventually mean slipping into torpor, and then it’s back to the drawing board.
Well, the whole WoD story I always found a bit over hyped. And the new WoD I found even more esoterical to understand. I guess I am not really made for it… ;-)
@ Alphast: Well, the joke is that White Wolf rebooted WoD because it got so complex they couldn’t even wrap their heads around it, and started contradicting themselves in the new expansions. :P
That said, I read Vampire Requiem rulebook and I liked it. They actually seemed to simplify and streamline a lot of things story wise. They made the world more open ended. Not sure about the Werewolf book – I have yet to get my hands on that one.
Anyone seen Being Human? TV series about a vampire and a werewolf who move into a house as room-mates, then discover there’s a ghost living there too. I think in that series the vampires have a fairly clear upper hand. Mostly because it dispenses with a lot of the old weaknesses of both species – vampires aren’t instantly crisped by sunlight, they just don’t like the sun much, might be weakened by it a bit, so they generally prefer the night.
Religious symbols… are treated oddly – the werewolf of the series is Jewish, and a star he wears around his neck repels some bad vampires, as does a Bible passage recited by a priest, but they seem to be one-use things that won’t work a second time. And his vampire friend was never affected by the star. Something funky going on there, maybe it’ll be explained when a second season rolls around.
Also seems like there’s generally some vampire/werewolf tension (vampires consider werewolves to be lower animals than humans, and are plotting a takeover of the humans to boot) but the lead vampire bucks the trend. Whilst there seem to be a lot of vampires around, only one other werewolf is ever shown.
Anyway… long story short, if you go by that setup the vampires get to be immortal and ageless, can survive the sun, and the only cost is finding sunlight a minor annoyance and having to feed occasionally. Werewolves on the other hand will turn wolfish every full moon, on the full moon and are completely uncontrolled savages for the duration of the night. They can devise ways to limit the damage (drag a chicken around in a circle centred on wherever they go to turn, so they follow that scent all night, or lock themselves away and have someone else let them out in the morning) but it’s generally a pretty raw deal with no particular upsides.
@ Matt`: Well, I think the religious symbol is bit like a Jedi mind trick:
– only works on the weak minded
– if you keep using it on the same person, they will get used to it
– only works when the user truly believes that it will work
The symbol doesn’t really matter – what matters is the faith behind it. So for example, and atheist wouldn’t be able to use a cross. A Jewish person on the other hand would have to use a Star of David rather than a cross for example. At least that’s how it worked in WoD.
If I had to become one of them, I’d definitely choose the vampiric route.
1) I already prefer the night to the day, even a little sunlight can really irritate my eyes, so I don’t go out much.
2) Related to point above, I burn in the sun easily. So sun-avoidance is something I do now.
3) Vampires live ‘forever’, until they’re killed or kill themselves. Werewolves seem to be as long-lived as a human. A human with remarkable healing powers, but still a human.
4) Werewolves seem far more animal when they turn. Vampires, on the other hand, remain themselves. They crave the blood which obviously would affect their actions, but they remain mostly themselves.
So, if, in 10 or 20 years someone happens to meet a real vampire, send me an email :p
I’ve been a fan of the World of Darkness for many years, and even before playing, I’ve been a fan of the creatures of lore. Now, I have to look at many different angles of this and look at the ups and downs of each one (I use world of darkness because it gives us rules to go by). First off, the Kindred (vampires): They are immortal, have many different ability’s, and have grate influence amongst mortal society. But the downside to them is they have one of the greatest weaknesses of all time, have to deal with loosing their friends and family and will never be able to grow attached t words someone do to the fact that they’ll loose that person, or be persecuted by other vampires for embracing the person and probably be killed for it. To me, immortality comes at to hi a price and is something I don’t want. Now, Garou (werewolves) have the capability to transform at will, has great strength, is in tuned with nature, able to converse with the dead, and are pretty much holy warriors. The problem with them is they are weakened by silver (not a big issue) tend to shun technology, and might loose control around an evil presence. Now, to me, the werewolves seem to have a much better deal than vampires do and so I would have to side with them… It’s also funny to see how vampires who have lived for hundreds of years still fear werewolves that have only been around for a couple of years.
i would pick a werewolf…for one they r both immortal vamps and wolves 2 they both heal up insanely fast, but werewolves are not killed by silver that was added on afterwards and although vampires do have other supernatural powers…i would b happy and extatic if i was a werewolf afterall i would b so much stronger than a vampire that they would need to use extra mumbo jumbo to fight evenly with mi and i dont have to give much up..other than i would have to controll my temper more not much of a downside now is it?
lol come on vampires really? i think you all focusing on one sterotypical focus there is ALOT of folklore on werewolves almost every movie before craplight suggested they were immortal think about it they have insane regen but neither race is “truly” immortal they can be killed afterall when world of darkness MMO does come out i honestly hope it isnt biased to just a vampire POV i’d much rather play as a human/slayer up against incredible odds but still pulling shit off ;P
Okay. You guys are considering. Folk lore and shows that give vampire the upper hand. I would personally choose to be a werewolf. Shows like Teen Wolf or Bitten show werewolves having the advantage, yes atfirst they are savage creatures who turn on the full moon, but after a while of practice and control a werewolf can learn to not lose control on the moon. You also have enhanced senses, super strength, speed. Agility. You have claws and fangs while in human form. And in Bitten the wolves don’t even shift on the full moon. It’s totally up to them to focus on not lose control. Same goes for twilight. The wolves have to stay calm, to stay normal just like vamps. The wolves are also immortal as long as they continue to shift, if they stop they can age normally. They also have super strength, and the rest of the powers listed about minus the claws and fangs. So werewolves are just as great.