DISCLAIMER:

This is an opinion. You don't have to agree. All exaggeration, vicious sterotyping, and extreme sarcasm in this article is meant for emphasis and/or comedic purposes. This opinion is also rather outdated; I have become a Vampire player since I wrote it and have learned to love the game (see OOC #9b), but kept this up as an amusing measure of how far I've come. So don't take it so much to heart.

Except for the thing about Toreadors...I mean every word of that. (c;

Like any other hobby, role-playing is continually evolving. In the '80s and earlier, the original RPG and THE game to be playing was Dungeons & Dragons. It still has major influence within the gaming community, as demonstrated by the relative success of 3rd ed. Classic or not, apparently some people believe that D&D isn't quite what it used to be. Sorry I can't give you a definite citation for this, but awhile ago I was reading an online article which contained a sentence something to the effect that "the Vampire LARP is the Dungeons & Dragons of the '90s." This definitely caught my attention. I've played a few WoD games which contained vampire characters, and LARPed scenes within the context of those games, but I've never really sat down and done a hardcore LARP or Vampire game of any sort. (Which tells me that I maybe shouldn't be writing this column...oh well.) Briefly I wondered if I was missing out, until I remembered why I avoided Vampire in the first place.

Don't get me wrong. Vampire: The Masquerade and the Storyteller system are pure genius from a writing and game creation standpoint, and have certainly contributed a lot to the RPG world. (LARPs have also brought tons of new female players into gaming thanks to their focus on plot and character, so hey, I can't bad-mouth them too much!) And I'm not denying the appeal the game has for many; you have a perfect right to disagree utterly with this column and go on LARPing and playing Vampire. But I realize that my position as a non-Vampire and/or LARP fan is pretty rare within the role-playing community...so here's what I think.

I think that a lot of the time LARPers take their game too seriously for my tastes. As much emphasis as I put on being in character and telling a good story, in the end I don't roleplay because I want to make it into an acting class. I roleplay because I want to have fun. And for me, half the fun (or more) comes from the wacky comments and weird goings-on that occur totally out of character. During a game, I'm always the one who has some snide comment, bad pun, or good-natured putdown to lighten the mood. I have a horrible feeling that I would be torn limb from limb if I attempted this in a LARP. Having to spend the whole night IC and keep my sarcasm to myself would just kind of kill a lot of the fun for me (although there are a few GMs out there who know me and would probably say this would be a good thing, hehe).

And even for a World Of Darkness game, Vampire is just so damn gloomy. When played right, I'm sure it gets beyond the standard "life is crap, we're all undead, let's go drink some blood and recite bad vampire poetry" business. But let's face it, there are a lot of ways that Vampire campaigns can (and do) go wrong. Many of the Vampire sites I've visited on the 'Net give me this general impression of the game: "Gee, we vampires sure are an inherently tragic lot. We have to go around drinking blood from humans. Man, that sucks. Ha ha. Although there are certain erotic connotations which I will now proceed to describe in too much detail. Oh, and did I mention that Kindred politics are very complex and annoying? But most of the time we just sit around discussing how tragic our inherently tragic lifestyle is and seeing who can be more gothic." *sigh* At least in Werewolf and Mage there's some kind of greater goal to work toward (save Gaia and reach Ascension, respectively). It's very easy for Vampire to become little more than "a bunch of goths and their problems," which I don't find nearly as interesting.

I am sure that I am going to get about a million awful flames about this column. Yes, I realize these are broadly drawn stereotypes, and that not every Vampire group is going to fit them. But the fact that I have these ideas in my head to begin with says something about the people who are playing it. If you want to be taken seriously and not stereotyped by stupid tabletopper geeks like me, why not take some steps to dispel those stereotypes? Maybe you haven't noticed, LARPers, but the general public thinks you're a bunch of freaks. So before you go complaining about how people like me just don't understand your lifestyle, maybe you should make some changes to make your hobby a bit more accessible. A lot of people may never understand any kind of gaming, but maybe if you didn't go out of your way to make it seem scary and intimidating, they'd at least accept it and let you go your own way. And other non-LARPers reading this, lest you should feel superior...hey, same for you, okay? We're all on this train together, so let's stick up for gaming and demystify it as best we can.

So is Vampire the D&D of the '90s? I'd say so. It's got the broad fanbase, the major impact, the innovative system and ideas, and the fundamentalists blaming it for all the evils of the world (but that's a topic for another column, I think). But despite all that, I'm not really sure it's for me. I suppose the only way I'd know would be to find a group and give it a try. But I know in order to me to stay IC, whatever character I played would have to have a burning, insatiable hatred for Toreadors. I just loathe them so much, those pretentious decadent poseur zombies who wander around spouting bad poetry and trying to be serious artistes but failing due to their extreme lack of talent. Sometimes I'd just like to...um...on second thought, maybe it's better that I just go my way and you go yours. Deal? (c:

**SIDE NOTE 11/4/00:** Thanks to Dan Sullivan, first of all for not flaming me (yay!) and second of all for suggesting Malkavians as an alternative to your standard doom-and-gloom vampire. I've gotta admit, the long and glorious tradition of Malkavian pranking and the general idea of spreading mass chaos sound like my kind of thing...it's something to keep in mind the next time I run across a Vampire campaign. Who knows, John, you may have created a monster...(c:

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