...Vampires?

[The Midnight Foundation]

I mean, if we're talking the walking dead, allow me to cast doubt on the notion that any drug of any kind would effect a Vampire's mental state. Afterall - none of their internal organs, including their brain, work any longer. Their heart doesn't beat at all any longer or provide any blood pressure to fluxuate, there's no dopamine levels to increase or decrease... I mean, all of the structures and chemicals that drugs react with to create sensation and addiction just plain aren't there.

[Jennifer]

I mean, if we're talking the walking dead, allow me to cast doubt on the notion that any drug of any kind would effect a Vampire's mental state. Afterall - none of their internal organs, including their brain, work any longer. Their heart doesn't beat at all any longer or provide any blood pressure to fluxuate, there's no dopamine levels to increase or decrease... I mean, all of the structures and chemicals that drugs react with to create sensation and addiction just plain aren't there.

Okay.

Just seemed to me that a mind-altering mushroom, which thrives on decay, may have entertaining side effects on vampires.

Mushrooms are nifty little things. Their primitive root systems are microscopic, but not small; the strands can go thousands of feet, creating a veritable network for miles.

If a mushroom were to happen on a vampire (undead), it could probably work these microscopic strands right into his skin. May even touch the brain, which DOES still work to some degree.

After all, what could be more fun than a plot that stems from a vampire with a hallucinogenic mushroom in its brain? Hell, with all the spores, make it an epidemic that the vampires are trying to overcome.

It's all about the plausible, and anything's plausible in game settings.

[fmitchell]

It's all about the plausible, and anything's plausible in game settings.

I guess you'd have to construct a model of what being "undead" really means, and in particular why vampires need blood.

In the Buffyverse, for example, any drug in the bloodstream will affect a vampire. Spike gets drunk, and Angel once reverted to soulless psycho behavior temporarily after drinking alcohol laced with a euphoriant.

For that matter, there's Dracula's famous line (in the movies, anyway): "I never drink ... wine. It pollutes the blood." So maybe "pollutants" hamper whatever nourishment vampires derive from blood, maybe even make them weak or sick.

Or maybe, as some games suggest, vampires really drink life-energy through the medium of blood, so vampires relish the mental state of their victims however it's derived. Which is why some vampires seduce, and others inspire terror ... and someone too drunk or high to respond correctly really harshes the vampire's buzz.

For that matter, maybe drugs that affect the living don't affect undead at all ... but vampires snort grave-mold when they want to relax.

[Jennifer]

Certainly game setting plays a large part of it. I threw in the susceptibility/resistance chart as more of a plot hook than anything; you know, here's a couple of ideas in case while in the fantasy characters' travels they happen upon an Aztec-like civilization or you want a specific character affected and need a means.

One of the concepts I always thought would be cool was the vampire shuffling out of the tomb and having a line of luminous translucent mushrooms growing out one shoulder. To me, that would be an awesome image.

You could readily use the concept of psychedelic mushroomschanging the habits of the undead with something like zombies too. They found that fungus that takes over an ant's brain and tells it where to go to infect more ants. Perhaps a psychedelic mushroom could create artificial bridges across the synapses in a zombie brain, allowing the zombie to think a little more functionally. Then you'd have smart zombies in one area. That would make for an interesting scenario.