Vampires

[Paganini]

Lots of vampire discussions on the Forge recently, but it seems to be an intensifying of a general theme. What's up with that?

To be more explicit, I'm wondering why vampires are such a big deal in the world of gamers. Sure, I know about the 80s pop goth subculture, Anne Rice, etc., that White Wolf tapped into. But it's not jus that; if it were, people would just play RPS at the vampire LARPs with their leather-wrapped friends (with more well-adjusted gamers thinking that vampires meant Bram Stoker. ;)

But we've got Vincent with three (!) vampire games, Zak has one, and now Jake is working on one. The main Window setting (The Stage) is more or less a vampire setting. I've seen several more on the internet through my browsing.

So what gives?

I don't get the idea that vampire games are the most stylish and trendy games. I don't get the idea that a vampire game has to have special mechanics (If you want to be trendy, why not use the Pool or Universalis?).

It's not that I'm dissing vampire games... I like vampire horror fine. It just doesn't seem like Ultimate Gaming material when you stack it up with sword & sorcery, space opera, etc. I mean, an equal member of the list yeah, but to have this much time and effort devoted to it?

Anyone have any ideas about this?

[C. Edwards]

I think that if we look at the big picture no more time and effort is devoted to vampire games than to sword & sorcery or space opera.  Where the difference really resides is in the intensity of interest regarding vampires.  The issues most people see as being inherent to the vampiric condition hit much closer to home than those inherent in being a barbaric sword-wielding slayer or an intergalactic smuggler.  That's how I see it anyway.

-Chris

[lumpley]

Blood, sex, intimacy, addiction.  Plus imagery that's immediate and compelling.

Plus wish fulfillment: vampires are strong smart fast powerful survivors with few practical and no moral constraints, unlike me.

Plus like Sorcerer did for modern-day occult, that is, provided a pretty final statement on the matter, no game's done for vampires yet.  I think we sense that there might be such a game out there, though, just waiting to be written.  Maybe Jake's.

The trick to such a game, if you ask me, is that it will embrace and indulge the wish fulfillment part, but in full survice to the metaphor.  Which, um, yeah, tricky.  Maybe we'll know it when we see it.

-Vincent

[Zak Arntson]

Well, my game was about fighting Vampires, if that helps. So instead of Anne Rice, it's more Dusk 'til Dawn/Vampire$.

I think vampires make great badguys, cause they're smart, strong, quick, they're out to not only kill your, but drink your blood and turn you into one! So there's the additional stress of knowing you'll retain your psyche but with this desire to kill.

As for vampires protagonists, yeah, I think it's the same reason why people get into any strong heroes. Then add to that a flawed nature (in pulp we have Elric as the iconic flawed hero) and boom! It's also easier to pretend to be a vampire in a modern day setting than a tragic pulp figure in ancient Hyborea.

When I first discovered Vampire: The Masquerade (back in 1st edition, before the huge goth explosion), I was very interested. Here's a game that's all about redemption, struggle, morality, with all the trappings of The Cure and Bauhaus. The quest for that balance, where you don't need blood, was hinted at in the book. How awesome would that be! Then every actual game I played turned out to be very dysfunctional.

So, personally, the appeal of vampire PCs is the interesting moral dilemma. How can you redeem yourself when you hurt & kill to survive?

[greyorm]

Why so many suddenly?
Easy...someone posts one idea and then you get someone else who says, "Oh, hey, I had a cool idea like that, too!" and starts working on it.

[Mike Holmes]

I don't get the idea that a vampire game has to have special mechanics (If you want to be trendy, why not use the Pool or Universalis?).

Heh,m funny you should mentoin it, but one of the playtests was a converted V:TM game. And I've seen vampires in another game of Universalis as well. And that works.

But as always, the reason for making a game with specific mechanics for Vampires is the same as always: System Matters. A system that has certain mechanics will reinforce a certain style of play and premise, etc. So if you want those things, you make a game with the mechanics that produced the effect you think will be cool.

So, for players who want to make up a vampire premise of their own, there are games like The Pool and Univeersalis, and GURPS, even. But if you want your game to come with some direction filled in, a game that's more likely to spur effective play if you don't have that vision, then you want one of these new Vampire games, or even V:TM. There are some who like the play produced by V:TM, you know.  :-)

Mike

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Lots of vampire discussions on the Forge recently.... What's up with that?

It's almost Samhain. Seems pretty obvious to me. (Just kidding.)

I'm interested in vampires for two main reasons:

[*]I'm a goth, and there is an association (but not an identity, I know goths who will kick your a$$ for calling them "vampire wanna-bes") between goth culture and the symbolism of the vampire.
[*]Issues of intimacy, control, and alienation fascinate me, and I don't think the time is ripe for "Bondage: the Domination" (nor would I be qualified to write such a game).[/list:u]

[UnSub]

I'd suggest that vampires are very closely related to the concept of humanity and the human race. A vampire is really one step beyond human without (generally) losing human status. A superhuman that doesn't wear spandex... although that does raise some interesting images (I am VampireMan!). You can also slip Vampires (of the V:TA sort) straight into the modern world and have everything work very well and be very understandable by players from a wide range of backgrounds. You can't do that with most scifi, sword and sorcery, etc. A lot of genres completely remove the modern world from the game session whereas V:TA kept it in and built on it.

Vampires are powerful and potent images. They can be lovers and monsters equally. They are perhaps to ultimate insider - better than normal humans, part of a secret society that controls mankind. Dark and powerful and alone and apart from society - I think this meets a lot of teenage dreams / fears and as such finds a willing audience looking for some kind of an answer / understanding in their escapism. Vampires are perhaps representative of the dark side of humanity and what's more attractive than that?

As for them becoming the Ultimate Gaming Material, I think they got a bit lucky. I think that offering players a powerful character that allows for equal mixing of violence, sex, political intrigue, personal characterisation and taboo subjects is always going to be appealing... Vampires just happened to hit critical mass. I'm sure it will pass, and before long everyone can whine about "Unicorn: The Happiness" and its players.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'd like to offer an outlook that differs significantly from those proposed so far. Instead of looking at the vampires, I'm looking at the humans.

In the very late 1980s, youth culture came up (through whatever mysterious processes youth cultures use) with a semiotic system to denote several things: (1) mobile social contact, that is, a way to meet and keep meeting people; (2) a deliberate "fuck you parents" set of images and concepts; (3) various music and other products that relate to and legitimize #1 and #2 commercially (because "rebel" or not, "alienated" or not, people like the stuff they wear to be bought by others); and (4) a defined degree of sexual activity that exceeded what was available elsewhere (i.e. high school). A semiotic system is a set of clothes, a way of speaking, postures, jewelry and other symbols.

Vampire was the role-playing game that adopted this subculture first (and wholly), and hence joined the array of "stuff" that the young Goths wore, liked, and did to "be" themselves. Everything that they did in their subculture was incorporated into what characters did in the game. That's what brought'em into the stores, to get this other piece of gear.

Basically, if we ask, "Gee, what does Vampire, or vampires as a concept, have that grabs people," all you have to do is look at the availability of [moderates self] [moderates self again] willing sex in that subculture. There ya go. "I get [moderates self] for doing this? 'This' is cool!"

I think looking at "vampire qualities" largely misses the mark. All the mystery, alienation, power, and other thematic issues of vampires strike me as exactly the same as the same qualities in motorcyclists, teen gangs, and wandering poets (~1960), hip campus rebels and self-proclaimed visionaries (~1970), hard-hitting ruthless "edged" go-getters (~1980) ... not "like" it, but the same. The sameness arises from these qualities (across all these examples) providing the opportunity to meet lots of similarly-minded people of the same age and have (or think you have) lots more chances to get lucky.

Important point: I am speaking here, of the appeal of these things and their associated trinkets to the restless middle-class youth culture, not to these things' actual qualities in the few individuals who "really" did them.

The coolness of Vampire, in this respect, once it gets established as a piece of that subculture, then becomes a recognizable commodity or cool-thing among the larger culture, i.e., most of us. We may groan at the subculture, but the item itself is recognized as cool. I fully expect bits and pieces of Vampire/Goth semiotics to remain as "meaningful" coolness-indicators throughout the history of pop culture, just as bits and pieces of all the subcultures I mentioned have done.

Best,
Ron

[lumpley]

He he.  A monster I am, lest I get no nookie from the goth chicks.

-Vincent

[Mike Holmes]

Hmmm. At first I was going to object. Vampires have always been around as powerful figures in our culture.

But then I thought, what if RPGs had been created in the 40s, at the height of vampire fame ala Bela Lugosi? Would one of those RPGs be "Vampire"? And the answer is no. Ron's right that Vampires in the movies in 1980s went from being straight up villains, to be the center of stories, themselves. Note how in old D&D you can't play a vampire, they're the bad guys ala Christopher Lee. I believe that the rule is, in fact, that if you do get turned into a vampire that you are controled by the vampire that made you, and thus become an NPC until cured.

Then along comes Anne Rice, and movies like The Lost Boys, etc, and suddenly the stories are about the vampires themselves. And then you get an RPG where you can play them.

So, I'd say not only do we eighties kids have an affnity for vampires, we have an affinity for a certain kind of vampire created in the late eighties ala Brad Pitt. For all the reasons that Ron mentioned. Oh, and one more: for those who did not have all the angst for real, it was fun for many to to follow those who did. Just as kids followed James Dean in the fifties.

Is this lost on generation Y or generation next? Or are vampires hip for them in the way that blackspliotation is cool for we eighties kids?

Mike

[MK Snyder]

Oh my broken heart!

Barnabas, how quickly you have been forgotten by those who think Ann Rice invented the sympathetic vampire protaganist.

I think had an RPG based on Dark Shadows been invented in the 60's and marketed to young women, you would have seen vampires take off. A daily tv series that ran for five years certainly gave te concept strong exposure, especially as an angst ridden figure ruled by love.

[Bob McNamee]

My wife loves that show...watches it on Sci Fi channel in the mornings!

Someone did a "Dark Shadows-like" game using the Soap rules, if I'm not mistaken...threads around here somewhere.

[Jeremy Cole]

It's not that I'm dissing vampire games... I like vampire horror fine. It just doesn't seem like Ultimate Gaming material when you stack it up with sword & sorcery, space opera, etc. I mean, an equal member of the list yeah, but to have this much time and effort devoted to it?

To propose an answer to the initial question, because in a lot of people's opinions, and I'm not speaking on behalf of the current game designers here, there isn't a vampire game out there that plays the way they want it to play.

Jeremy

[b_bankhead]

Oh my broken heart!

Barnabas, how quickly you have been forgotten by those who think Ann Rice invented the sympathetic vampire protaganist.

I think had an RPG based on Dark Shadows been invented in the 60's and marketed to young women, you would have seen vampires take off. A daily tv series that ran for five years certainly gave te concept strong exposure, especially as an angst ridden figure ruled by love.

 Ah Barabas Collins! I was in grade school during the run of Dark Shadows and even actual LITTLE girls had the hots for Barnabas!

 Vampires gain their strength from SEX,BLOOD and DEATH (as any shrink or anthropologist will tell you these three are way up there on the archetypal/unconcious hit parade).  The vampire wraps these big winners up in a good looking human skin. No wonder it has a lasting appeal.