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http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/060805
For the most part, it is an amusing read, but I had a lot of problems with his vampire example. Not that I think vampires exist, but his math was far too simple.
In short, his math assumes that vampires always sire another vampire after feeding, and that vampires can never die. So, what you get is exponential growth made famous by the old rice parable.
The fact that vampires never die seems to be a big flaw in his reasoning. Vampires may die from mishap (e.g. sunlight) or deliberate actions by humans or other vampires. You'd have to assume that the humans are going to notice the growth rate or at least their own losses. Eventually they are going to fight back. Even if we assume that humans can't kill vampires, the vampires can always choose to control their own population by killing off new vampires before they can feed. Basically, the only way his math works is if you assume that no vampires ever die, which clearly is contradicted by the literature he is drawing from. :D
A better article on the whole thing is this one, which talks about vampires and humans from the view of an ecologist.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~ccroft/Tip
The gaming tie-in: In D&D, level draining creatures have no real limit to how many other such creatures they can create. So, barring death or losses, you can expect a lot of new wights and vampire spawn to be created, particularly if you follow the stock worldview where the majority of people are level 1 commoners. Outside of a few tidbits in Libris Mortus, there's nothing in the base rules that would prevent such undead from attempting to overrun all living creatures. Early detection of level draining undead might be an important skill for humans to cultivate.
Games like Vampire deal with this issue by putting social restrictions on vampires to prevent them from siring more vampires.
2006-10-26 11:56 pm (UTC)
2006-10-27 12:41 am (UTC)
In the new edition of D&D, a limit has been placed on Lycanthropes such that only natural ones can spread the affliction. I believe I read that this was to prevent the logistics of lycanthropic plagues (and the spread within a PC party). I guess they didn't consider undead plagues.
My Halloween game this year dealt with a clan of natural lycanthropes who wracked their revenge on a lord by taking over his town with the spread of their progeny. Given how prevalent level 1 commoners are, it was easy for them. Then I threw in an everlasting full-moon, and we turned it into a horror game with a town of permanent night overrun by weregargoyles.
2006-10-27 01:08 am (UTC)
Contrast that with wights, wraiths, spectres and shadows, where the master has no limits to the spawn it can create or control.
I suppose one major point of difference between the two is that full Vampires retain most of their older abilities (created with a template). All of the others lose all previous abilities. So, while 10000 wights are pretty fearsome, they might not be quite so bad for the level 20+ epic party.
I remember seeing that distinction on the lycanthropes, and I had much the same reaction -- this allows a player to play a shapechanger without allowing him to create an army of the same.
2006-10-27 01:55 am (UTC)