It’s not Spring Break yet so no new design posts from me. However, I think you should take a look at the posts I am linking to below.

Nothing happens in a vacuum, especially not creative endeavors, and since I both send links to my design posts to Twitter, as well as “think out loud” there, it is inevitable that a network of influences would eventually emerge. Take for example last week: I’m not sure how it started, but for some reason, my Twitter feed last week was awash in a number of conversations about the World of Darkness, both old and new. Over the five days of the work week, there was not one day when at least a handful of World of Darkness-related tweets flew by, sparking conversations and blog posts.

This has been happening for a while now, of course; it’s just the nature of Twitter. Of interest to me at this moment, though, are these blog posts, all of which have some sort of relation to my current vampire project. I think that if you have found what I’m doing here of any interest, you should check out these posts as well. If they in turn spawn their own series, I’ll do my best to let you all know as well.

Hacking Werewolf by Mike Lafferty

I never played Werewolf: The Apocalypse; the transformable beast thing was never my own, let alone the bestial shapeshifting eco-warriors angle that White Wolf went for in this game. I had friends who really loved this game, though, on par with my love for Vampire, so I was aware of the same situation happening there as in my game: (to borrow a phrase that Stuart Robertson said in the comments to this post) it seemed like it would be An American Werewolf In London, but turned out to be Captain Planet with a lot of fur. Or put differently: gothic superheroes, just a different kind than the vampires were.

Mike sets out, not to rebuild Werewolf, but to tweak it to do what it promises it can do, along the way engaging in an exploration of the werewolf myth and the salient points that he wants to spotlight. For the Werewolf fan contingent out there, I think this will be of great interest, and maybe you can help Mike out in his quest.

Journey of a Thousand Miles by JJ Lanza

Mage couldn’t be left behind, so JJ, blaming me for the umpteenth time in recent memory (*grin*), dusts out his copy of Mage: The Ascension and takes both a loving stroll down memory lane as well as a hard look at what it could’ve been, why he thinks that, and where the book itself betrays its own failure to deliver. Again, I never played Mage, so I can’t comment from the inside, but man, did I enjoy JJ’s insight into the game, especially when he calls out the game (author) on its own self-censoring.

JJ is not setting out to hack or rebuild Mage, though he is taking all the meaningful things he tapped into through Mage and using them as building blocks for something else, a game that he once created and which he is now revisiting with the insight gained via this exploration to be what he thought Mage could be. Mage fans should check this out and join that conversation.

Me and Mage: The Ascension by Ryan Macklin

Ever since I started talking about revisiting Vampire, Ryan has been talking about doing the same with the game that was his own crush, Mage: The Ascension. It took some weeks, and some egging on from me and JJ Lanza, but it finally paid off and Ryan has uncorked the bottle with this post, this love letter. I love the passion Ryan shows for the game; it makes me want to play with him, which is saying a lot since this is a game that I never really felt any calling for. It also calls my attention how Ryan distills the game as he sees it: two sides, both wrong – pick one and go. Moral ambiguity. What’s going to be interesting to see is how Ryan and JJ approach the same game and where do they take it, where does the game take them.

Ryan teases that this is just the initial post. Let’s make sure it is only the first of many, shall we?

WoD Mod #2: Virtue and Vice as Aspects by Shaun Hayworth

To my knowledge, Shaun has not read any of my posts on Rebuilding Vampire (and if he has, he hasn’t left any comments nor made any reference to it in our Twitter exchanges). Which is great because it shows a case of parallel thinking when it comes to the topic of what we wanted out of Vampire. In his series, Shaun is writing about a couple of modifications he wants to introduce to his World of Darkness games, and if you read the one I have linked here, then go read my own post on Joy & Sorrow, you’ll see we’re getting at the same idea via different routes. That tickles me because I like reading about people making these games their own, and because it gives me a little ego boost that I’m on the right track with what I’ve been thinking and designing. Drop by and see what Shaun’s been cooking up.

I did this last year and had lots of fun, so I’m bringing it back for an encore.

From March 1-17, 2010, I’ll be hosting the a St. Patrick’s Day RPG Blog Carnival.

• Who: Open to any and all RPG/Hobby Gaming blogs (RPG-related content preferred).
• What: Write a post on anything dealing with RPGs/gaming and all things Irish. As long as your post is about Ireland/Irish stuff and gaming, it’s cool.
• When: Your post must be published on or before Wednesday, March 17, 2010.  As soon as you publish, leave a link to it in the comments of this post. Feel free to use the graphic provided on your posts as well.

I will collect all the posts and publish a round-up on Wednesday, March 17 (though if I have at least 3 posts by St Patty’s morning, I’ll publish the round-up and update as I can during the day).

You can see the post roundup for last year’s St. Patrick’s Day.

I hope you’ll join me and celebrate the Emerald Isle. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section.

Heading back to Ierne for another glimpse.

It was a terrible sight to behold, and I could not turn away. Fomorian heads and limbs flew in every direction, making me doubt those creatures had the same number of extremities as I did. Blood pooled at the feet of the giant a few feet away from me; hacked carcasses littered the field around us as far as I could throw a stone, yet the Fomorians did not relent. In groups of twos and threes they approached, frothing mad, evil incarnate, wicked blades flashing – only to be annihilated by the thing that only I knew to be my foster brother Bran.

I knew the stories of Cúchulainn, I knew about the ríastradh—the warp spasm—but I had never witnessed it myself. When, after fending the devils off for an hour, a Fomorian spear pierced my leg, Bran’s rage surged unchecked. His mouth foamed as he tore the shirt from his back, and as he rushed forward to meet the mass of Sea Devils attacking us, he started to grow, taller than a house, wider than three bulls. His skin bubbled from within like tar bursting from the earth, and his muscles stretched into shapes unnatural to humans. His right arm grew to the size of a thick oak tree trunk, and with every swing of the sword which now seemed like a toy in his mutated hand he slashed three Fomori in half. His hair stood on end like a halo of spikes, and from each tip burst a mist of blood and pure rage that choked any who came too close to him. His legs twisted around in their sockets, his knees now at the back, and he was able to leap high into the air and rain death as he came down. And just like the hero Cúchulainn, one eye sunk deep into his head, while the other almost popped out of its socket, and it was the last thing a Fomorian saw before being shred to pieces.

One hundred Fomorian died that afternoon at the hands of Bran, the warped one, hero of An Daingean, and I was never able to look at my foster brother the same way again.

—From the journal of Amergin Ó Míl

Ok, so I cheated a little here. This was originally published back in 2006 as the introduction to Bardic Lore: Ristradh, my D&D 3.5-compatible product introducing the warp spasms of Celtic myth. I did revise the above version, cleaned it up a bit, but it is essentially the same scene. The reason I brought it into the present, and into this Ierne series of vignettes, is that I need the warp spasm to be present in what I’m planning to do with Ierne in its early stages, and I saw no reason to write another scene when that one was very much to my liking.

To address something that came up in the comments to Ierne: The Gate, these little vignettes are not really meant to be interconnected. Imagine you’re flying over Ierne and every so often you zoom down to ground level and get a small glimpse of what’s going on with a few people, then you fly back up and go somewhere else on the island. I’m not saying they couldn’t be interconnected–some have already suggested ways in which they are–but I’m leaving that to you.

By the way, I promise I won’t tease forever on what Ierne is to be. Astute readers will have picked up the few clues I’ve left in previous posts or seen the one outright mention of it I made earlier in January. So I’ll come clean, but not just yet.

It’s midterms this week so I’m taking a break from game design thinking. You can follow the posts in this series so far by checking out the tag “Rebuilding Vampire.”

In lieu of more design, I’d like to quickly address a couple of things, just to be clear to myself mostly, though others may find this useful as well.

First the caveat.

I think I already said this in a previous post, but it bears repeating to be 100% crystal clear:

I love Vampire: The Masquerade to undeath. Really, to little tiny bits. Thus, this game that’s emerging as I write along is *not* me saying “VtM Sucks!” Not even by a long shot. This *is* me saying, “VtM had some things that I felt got lost in the shuffle and here’s me trying to bring them back to the spotlight in my own way.” The latter does not detract from the former. If I wanted to be more dramatic in my answer, I’d say that this game is both my reply, and love letter, to VtM, my way of saying, “You made me think about these things, here’s what I thought of them; thanks so much, and enjoy the gift.”

Now the self-deprecation.

I am not a great game designer. I am a passably good system hacker, but I am not the kind that comes up revolutionary game systems that redefine the way things are done and set forth a new road for all to travel. I don’t care about that either. I admire the hell out of people who are that kind of game designer, and I do my best to learn from them and apply those lessons to what I do.

This is all to say that whatever this vampire game turns out to be, it will 99.9% likely have nothing amazing about it’s design, just a collection of parts that I have enjoyed and been influenced by from other games arranged in a way that makes sense for this theme. Main inspirations for me at the moment are VtM/VtR, FATE, Lady Blackbird/The Shadow of Yesterday, Don’t Rest Your Head and Sorcerer. I’m seeing how these games did certain things and bringing those applications to my idea.

When I say I’m being self-deprecating, in a way it’s me keeping my inner creative monkeys in check. If I don’t, they may get the idea that the only way this game can be ever done is if I set forth a new way to roleplay that brings heavenly light upon my book and all who gaze upon it immediately throw out their entire collections in favor of my one true game. It’s bullcrap, I know, but that’s who my mind sometimes works, and why I some(many)times do not finish projects which I start.

Besides, I have a very explicit goal that this be a game that my non-gamer wife can play without wanting to throw cutlery at me for its complexity, so that also helps keep things in check.

So, I love VtM, this is my love letter game to it, and it’s gonna be new applications of proven game designs. Let’s carry on, then.

As I have already mentioned, at the crux of the tragic story of the vampire is the fact that they are on a downward spiral towards damnation, destined to destroy all that they held dear. If you read through the comments on the previous two posts in this series you will find that over and over we keep going back to the simple, and very important, idea of why should one care about the vampire’s journey on the road of dwindling Humanity. Or put another way, why should I (the player of the vampire character) care about the loss of Humanity? Why stall it? Why not give in to the beast?

There are traits in the two Vampire games that sort of deal with this. In VtM we have the traits of Nature and Demeanor, which basically sum up what your behavioral essence is on the inside and how you project yourself to the world. These are good to help shape how you want to play your character, but they really don’t say much about who your character is, which ultimately is what we’re driving at when looking for the reasons to cling to Humanity. VtR uses Virtue and Vice to replace Nature/Demeanor. I like the contrast of these two traits because, while they can help you shape how you play the character, they now say something about who this character is, if maybe a bit indirectly. The Virtue/Vice split also hearkens back to classical philosophical thought, something I can totally dig. Both of these sets of traits, however, have the same drawback for me: they are too vague. This is great for the games in which they are used, as a limited number of combinations can be used to represent virtually endless characterizations across a number of games sharing the same basic system, but for what I’m seeking to do, I want something that’s a hell of a lot more focused.

For my rebuild, I want to take the idea that these stats presented in each game, and have something that serves a similar function but that speaks more – nay, speaks directly, at who the character is. I don’t want traits that merely suggest how to play the character, but something that when you read it you immediately know in some way what this character is all about.

Mick Bradley brought up a very powerful quote that I think sums up the theme of a vampire game:

“When the fall is all there is, it matters.”

(- Prince Richard; The Lion In Winter, 1968)

That right there is the driving theme for what I’m trying to accomplish, and when it comes to vampires struggling with their Humanity, how it matters is thanks to two important traits: their Joy and their Sorrow.

If I have defined the ebb and flow of Humanity as the character’s struggle to maintain the virtues that define us as human, it is these two traits that provide the basic reason why even engage in this struggle.

A character’s Joy is the one thing that they truly and honestly love in the world, be it a person, item, location or idea. This is the one thing they would save from a burning building, so to speak, the one thing that is the embodiment of love, of something good, for them; the one thing that makes their undead heart beat. It is also the thing that is most at risk of being destroyed by their own hand as they descend into the maw of the beast.

A character’s Sorrow is the one thing they regret in the world from having become a vampire. This is the one thing that truly causes them a sense of loss and despair, and which their new nature as a vampire pretty much means they will never have or achieve. This is the wound where the beast pours salt and iodine then sticks its talon for good measure.

These traits are flags for the GM that say “this is what’s important to my character, and this is where I want you to hurt me as we play this tragedy.” For the player, these traits help define the character be more than just a bloodsucking monster with some cool powers, bringing into sharp focus why they should struggle to maintain their dwindling Humanity.

I’m still toying with the various mechanics of the game, but I know that I want these two traits to work in ways similar to Aspects in FATE-powered games. That is, these traits can be called upon to provide some sort of short-term bonus to the character when the situation directly addresses one of them, and they can be used by the GM as conflict fodder tailored to the specifics of each character. I would like these traits to also help shape the reward/experience system in ways similar to how Keys work in The Shadow of Yesterday, but I still need to give that some more thought.

The other thing I want these traits to do is shape certain kinds of scenes that a player can call for, simply called Joy Scenes and Sorrow Scenes. In these types of scenes, the spotlight shines directly on that one character and how he/she deals with a (short) situation tied specifically to the trait in question. These are meant to be character-development scenes in which we glimpse a little bit behind the curtain and get to know more about what Humanity is in concrete terms for this character. In addition, why this is important is what I want to have a dwindling resource that only/mainly gets to be refreshed via one of these scenes. I still need to deal with dice mechanics before I get to the point where I can decide what the dwindling resource will be, but I know I want this dynamic between the resource that is spent and refreshing via an exploration/exposition of the inner self.

In the endless night of a vampire’s existence, Joy and Sorrow should act as the compass that helps them maintain a due course along the Humanity line lest they go astray and be lost in the murky, Stygian waters of the beast.

What are your thoughts?

I’ve met a fair number of rabbis during my time as a Jew. Most of them are regular people who have dedicated their lives to studying G-d’s Torah and helping people out perform mitzvot. They lead normal lives and have the same kinds of issues most people do, except they face them with this admirable confidence in Hashem. What’s more, I’ve yet to meet one that doesn’t also impart that joy they have to others. I also know there are some rabbis that transcend even the rabbis I have known, that make them seem in comparison as normal as I seem next to a rabbi. These are rabbis that have achieved levels of connectivity to G-d that are truly astounding. We call them tzadikim, which can be translated as righteous. Today I met such a rabbi.

I can’t tell you anything about the Kalever Rebbe; before Monday I had never heard of him, or seen his picture. Understand, there are a lot of Chassidic groups each with their own Rebbe, even if the one most people know of is Chabad-Lubavitch. But I saw that the Kalever Rebbe would be visiting FIU for one day, at a time when I could drop by for a visit. I’ve been going through some spiritual stuff lately and I figured meeting with a tzadik would be good (my wife concurred).

Long story short, he was delayed from the 12 PM time he was originally scheduled to have been on campus, but after my class I walked over and was able to see him.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, maybe something earth-shaking, a spiritual sledgehammer to the chest, based on accounts of meetings with other tzadikim I have heard/read. It was nothing like that. It was actually about as mundane and simple a meeting as you can imagine: him in a chair at the head of a conference table, me standing to his right, us sharing some words. He shook my hand and didn’t let go until we were done, and he’d pat it for emphasis pretty much every other word. He gave me a few blessings, and gave me a very simple, almost elementary, answer when I told him what I’ve been going through. A smile never left his face.

It took only a few minutes. I walked out and went on with my day. But it was subliminal, and without any effort, he imparted me with some of the peace that seemed to hang around him like fruits on a tree.

There was nothing extraordinary about our meeting, and that’s what I found most extraordinary.

Something came up in the comments to my previous post, Rebuilding Vampire: Humanity, brought up by Mick Bradley about whether there should be the glimmer of hope/redemption for a vampire. He made this point after I had stated that, in my view of the vampire myth/game, the story of the vampire is one of an inevitable downward spiral towards transformation into a beast that will destroy all that he used to love, with the dramatic caveat being how long can that be staved off. Considering his feedback led me to consider the vampire myth and ask for other people’s opinions on Twitter (and I got good replies – see the comments for links).

The older vampire myth centers on this being a creature of darkness that embodies all the evils of mankind; it’s a morality figure meant to teach people what not to do. It is the “other,” a monster devoid of any human quality, something to be utterly destroyed, no questions asked. There is no concern for who the vampire is or was, only for what it is and what must be done to end its evil.

More modern interpretations of the myth put the vampire in the protagonist chair, and we start to look at who the vampire was before becoming undead, as well as the struggle of the vampiric life. The vampire becomes a hyper-human, a creature that’s more human than human. I don’t think it would be too pretentious to say that it becomes a metaphor for the human condition, a reflection of what excess can and will do.

It is in this latter form of the myth that Vampire: The Masquerade lies, with the vampires as the protagonists, exploring what it means to be a monster that is a pinnacle of humankind that is doomed to lose its Humanity. This is where the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles lie, where a movie like The Hunger lies, where a show like Forever Knight lies (and dare I say it, where the Twilight series lie as well). This is also the aspect of the myth that I am looking to explore and build a game around. [Note: the vampire-as-antagonist angle is already covered by the game Annalise.]

I write all that to ask the following question:

Does there need to be present a possibility of the vampire achieving hope/redemption from its nature for the game to work?

VtM had Golconda as a goal for vampires that wanted to find a way to overcome/find balance/make peace with their Beast. Yet, considering how rare it is described as being, and how as the editions go by it becomes less defined and more left to Storyteller interpretation, it always struck me as a concession to a segment of the population rather than a cohesive part of the myth.

So, if we put the monster as the protagonist of the game, does there need to be the hope of finding a way to achieve salvation/redemption from the new nature, or is it enough to have the tragedy of the inevitable fall and the struggle to stave it off for as long as possible?

Sound off, please.

In thinking of what would I do to re-arrange Vampire’s mechanics to reflect the type of game I believe is intended (as opposed to presented), it always has been obvious that Humanity is the one central stat around which everything else must orbit. After all, the game is about the loss of this essential trait and the descent into the unbridled bestiality of the vampire (which, of course, presupposes that you want to stave this loss off as much as possible; otherwise you’d be an NPC).

So we have our main trait, Humanity. I’ll keep this on a 1-10 scale because it provides for a good amount of gradation in the middle, with 10 being fully Human, and 1 being inhuman (inhumane?). This stat determines how Human you are, serves as the fuel for your vampire powers, and determines how many dice you roll to avoid losing/regaining Humanity. When Humanity reaches 1, you have lost all connection to what it means to be a human, and your character is removed from the game.

I am thinking also of there being a parallel trait called Beast (Vampirality? Vampireness? Vampirosity?) that goes from 10-1, with 1 being a very basic vampire, and 10 being the epitome of vampire-dom. This stat determines how powerful a vampire you are, how many dice you roll to do vampire-y stuff and is in direct opposition to Humanity, to the point that we could say that this stat’s goal is to eat away your Humanity. When Beast reaches 10, you are of too alien a mind and fully a beast, and your character is removed from the game.

There are two issues I am faced with at this point:

1. Are these two separate stats or two ends of a spectrum?
2. At what points do normal humans begin?

These are related. If I say normal humans start at 10 Humanity, I’m saying all humans are paragons of the species and this isn’t the case. Some people, normal people, will have lower Humanity scores, and some will be right at the bottom of that scale without being vampires. I’m thinking normal humans start at 7 – not too high but not middle of the road either. This leaves a score that can be improved in play and cannibalized in character generation to create a more powerful vampire than the basic kind.

I see the act of having become one as having taken away part of your Humanity, so becoming a vampire takes away 1 Humanity and turns it into 1 Beast, where all vampires start off.

Now, if Beast becomes an opposing force to Humanity, do I make it that it increases only when Humanity decreases? Or can a vampire continue to increase in powers (which I am clearly equating with giving in to the Beast that turns it into an inhuman monster) while retaining a sense of its Humanity, or is it strictly a gain one-lose the other situation?

My gut feeling is that Humanity and Beast are inversely related: when Humanity goes down, Beast goes up and viceversa. In this paradigm a vampire is only as human as her restraint from being a more powerful vampire.

Humanity/Beast Stat

This model says the following about the game: “You will only remain human if you forego your new nature as a vampire.”

The other conceit that will be built into the game via in-play mechanics is: “You cannot forego your nature as a vampire.”

I think this is a good basic pillar upon which to construct the rest, but I could use some feedback.  Up to now, what do you think?

I better get this written down before I blink and February is halfway gone!

So how did January go at school? Not bad, overall. My classes have progressed along just fine, and I’m doing just fine in all of them except for one.

In Human Physiology we’ve covered a lot of material. A lot. The test was actually today, but today is Feb so I’ll talk about this later on. But I’m getting it. I’m not having any problems with the material, and what’s even better, I’m recalling more and more whatever I had learned before and adding it to the new things I’m learning. It’s a bit of a mess in my head because some stuff is recalled in Spanish and other in English, but I can make sense of it just fine.

In Ethics I’m having a blast; I feel at home in that class because it reminds me so much of my time in the higher-level Literature classes. The prof is a very enjoyable fellow who makes the material amenable and easy to comprehend. I’ve been doing just fine in the weekly quizzes we have to take, as well as in the discussion questions he puts up for us to respond to (I’ve been doing Internet forums for a long time). I absolutely hate that we have to do a group project, but at least at the moment my group seems to be working fine and we do have a topic that is interesting and can yield a good result.

In Psychology I already had my first test and I aced it, getting a 96/100. The topic is interesting, especially because I love the idea of figuring out people (even if I can’t figure out myself). The class’s only drawback is the size, but the prof has managed to keep it under control thus far. We’ve already started with Human Development, so we’re going at a good pace.

In Statistics I am utterly and completely lost, however. The professor is just not helpful at all, even if he goes over the material over and over every few days. It’s just his way of speaking and teaching: it comes across as confrontational, though I know it isn’t. But in the end, he’s just not conducive to learning the material. I’ve decided to simply learn Statistics from the book and show up for the attendance requirement; if I happen to pick anything up from him, then better. It does mean I am very lost in this class, and that worries me. My test is Feb 23, so I hope I can figure it all out by then.

And finally, the Human Physiology Lab is going along well, as well. The TA that’s leading the group is a bit of a pain in the ass, since she has a bit of an attitude and rushes us a lot when doing the experiments, but I’m hoping she’ll chill out. Otherwise I’ll mention it to her, or to the Lab Director if that doesn’t make things improve. But I’m loving all the experiments so far. And I have a lab coat and goggles! Also, I now have a Halloween costume. 

Let’s see what February brings.

In my post about Vampire and My Humanity, I stated categorically that whenever I play this re-visiting of Vampire, it *has* to be Vampire: The Masquerade, as opposed to the newer Vampire: The Requiem. But why be so fastidious? In the end, aren’t they just about the same, i.e. games in which you take the role of a vampire, using a game system engine that’s about 95% similar? Just play whichever, right? Well, no.

This is all subjective, obviously, but to me, Vampire: The Masquerade (VtM) has a few qualities that set it apart from its newer counterpart and, while I surely would play Vampire: The Requiem if given the chance, if I’m calling the shots or have any influence on the matter, it’s VtM that I’m gonna go for always.

Before we move on, let me make this very clear: this is not a slight against Vampire: The Requiem *at all.* I like the new game, I like what they did with it and the new World of Darkness, and I want White Wolf to continue to have great success with the game line. This isn’t about dissing Requiem, but about extolling Masquerade.

First and foremost there is an emotional component to my predilection of VtM. I got the game in circa 1991 after spotting it at my local comic/games shop without prior knowledge of its existence (ah, the days before the Internet) and it blew my mind. I used $20 that I didn’t have to buy it and read it cover to cover in two nights. This was completely unlike D&D and I was reeling with the possibilities of an “adult” roleplaying game, to the point that I almost stopped playing D&D because it felt childish. It would be a few years before I actually got to play it, but nevertheless, this game etched itself into my psyche and has never gone away.

Related to the emotional component, there’s not just mine towards the game, but also the game towards itself. VtM was published by White Wolf when they were a small company (in hobby game industry terms), just a bunch of scrappy designers staking (no pun intended) a claim in the market that was dominated by the fantasy giant of Lake Geneva, WI. Vampire was edgy, belligerent, pushy; it said “fuck” a lot, smoked like a chimney stack, drank hard and partied harder; it listened to loud music, be it punk or metal or goth, especially goth; it was sexy and sexual, messy and complicated and it didn’t call you in the morning but certainly bought you a drink the night after. And frankly, my impression was that so did White Wolf. That attitude won me over like a freakin’ devotee. It threw its hook out when I was 17-18, with all the bullshit that entails, and I bit and was reeled in. In many ways I’m still hooked by that line.

The goth component was one that took me a while to fully understand, mainly because in Puerto Rico, at the time, to the best of my knowledge (meaning, within the incredibly small limits my world had at the time), there were no goths. At the very least there was no gothic scene, no general sense of what a “goth” was beyond Winona Ryder in Bettlejuice. So it wasn’t until I moved to Miami and some of my friends introduced us to the goth scene (especially The Kitchen Club, still going today though just not the same) that I fully understood that one aspect of VtM. Needless to say I totally got into goth, even if I didn’t dress the part, and embraced the dark ennui and woe-is-me-ness of the game and loved every bit of it.

If I had to reduce it all to one word, I’d say what really grabs me about VtM is its passion. VtM translated the enhanced perception of reality that a vampire has into words and fed them to me every time I read it or played it. A vampire either has passion for something or it dies a slow death more painful than that brought by the rising sun. And as a player/Storyteller of the game, that’s exactly how it made me feel about it: you either have passion for this game or just drop it and go raid a dungeon. There was no middle ground, and I welcomed that.

Also consider the very name and the tagline. The word “Masquerade” said a lot to me about the vampires I would play: they used masks, hid behind false faces, mingled with the populace in a danse macabre. Masquerade sounds playful, but its also full of deceit for no one is whom they seem. Yeah, I got immediately who these vampires were from the name. Then there’s the tagline: a game of personal horror. That line speaks volumes, conjures scary images, hides under the bed while you sleep at night. There is a promise in that line that this game will reach into your gullet, pull out the nasties that make you weep like a child when no one’s watching and make you face them. There is passion in that tag line. One of my biggest let downs with VtR was that the tag line was just too generic: a modern gothic storytelling game. It fits the toolkit approach of the new game, but it’s too bland.

As I said in my previous post, Vampire was also my first game in which the main thrust of the system was featuring the story. Stats like Nature/Demeanor, Humanity and Willpower all highlighted that there was more than just cool abilities. But as I also stated already, I knew this, but didn’t grasp it fully. If VtM has one major flaw, is that it tries to do too many things and loses sight of its core question: will you keep your Humanity or succumb to the Beast? It also got bogged down with the metaplot that increasingly took over the line, to the point where it drove people away from trying the game, and forced the reset of the game and the entire World of Darkness. VtR has a bit of setting flavor but it doesn’t make the same mistake as before.

Even with its faults, maybe even because of them, I still love Vampire: The Masquerade. It’s like that first car you bought with your own money; it doesn’t matter how beat up it is, it’s yours and you always have fond memories of it, even as you drive a newer model. Vampire is intrinsically tied with a time of my life when I was dynamic, reaching new boundaries then breaking through them, stretching my proverbial wings, rebelling against anything and everything, a time when I was an emotional and hormonal mess, a child becoming an adult who behaved like a child. In wanting to play VtM again I’m not looking to go back to this time (though maybe tap a bit into that energy), but rather revisit my old haunts; it’s the equivalent of visiting your old high school when at your parent’s house for the holidays or some such. Maybe I’ll see new things I missed the last time, or maybe I’ll just have a good time with that which was so much fun once in my past. Either way, it’s something I’d like to do.

Because I have evolved in a lot of ways, including what excites me about games these days, I can’t help but look at Vampire and think, how could I do this game with elements that resonate with me today? At the very least I would redo a character sheet that puts Humanity right in the middle of the page, with all other stats arranged peripherally, but I’m also thinking more essential changes, like putting Humanity as the core stat and making everything else revolve around that, have the game be an inverted relationship between being human and being a beast. But that’s something for another post.