Open Mouth, Insert Foot, Drink Blood

(corollary to OOC #9)

You know, it sure is funny the way life works sometimes. Just a few days after posting the now-somewhat-infamous (although no one's flamed me about it yet...thank you!) OOC column 9 about Vampire: The Masquerade and LARPers, I blithely headed over to my weekly Mage session, figuring we'd spend another few weeks tracking the Nephandi in ancient Babylon. Wrong. We all knew that our local kuei-jin, Cui, was pretty bloodthirsty, but who would've thought that he'd be cold-blooded enough to kill a twelve-year-old kid, thereby resulting in a ruined plot, a burnt-out GM, and a currently unfinished campaign? And moreover, who would've thought that the replacement game our substitute GM would decide to run until the regular guy gets back on track would be Vampire: The Dark Ages?

Yup, that's right...yours truly is no longer a Vampire virgin. On the advice of people who've emailed me on the subject, I rolled up a typically deranged Malkavian named Tamar Waters and joined a party consisting of a kleptomaniac Ravnos who somehow managed to make Tamar look sane, your normal garden-variety Assamite, an astoundingly sadistic Lasombra, and one of those sniveling poser Toreadors (nope, haven't changed my opinion on that, and I doubt I ever will!). Over the course of a ten-hour session, I sired someone against my will and without anyone's permission, developed a burning hatred for the Lasombra for staking my progeny out in the sun to die (I'll admit it was kind of funny, but I still think telling him "I'd love to watch you crisp like bacon" was going too far), committed diablerie not once but TWICE, and went from 9th generation to 7th. (Umm...yeah, you read that right...this is going to be an interesting campaign.)

And you know what? I had a lot of fun doing it.

So if there's anything this experience has taught me, it's that Vampire doesn't have to be gloomy or always taken seriously. My first session was certainly neither, and never even approached sheer nauseating gothicness. No one sat around talking about how tragic they were. (The running joke about starting every sentence with "Blooood! Blooood!" proved that much...) In short, it was just as good a roleplaying experience as any other I've had. So, now to say what it is I've been meaning to say through this column:

Step one: Open mouth. Step two: Insert foot. Actually, make that the entire leg. If you took offense at my comments in OOC #9, I apologize. I would say that I've learned my lesson about not ripping on games before I actually play them, but I doubt I have. In fact, I'll probably write something equally stupid before the year is out. And in case you were wondering, I stand by my comments about LARPers. I firmly believe that there are two kinds of LARP in this world, good and bad, and to paraphrase a dumb rock song, good LARP is hard to find. Having had this experience with Vampire, though, I must admit I'm tempted to seek out a group and judge for myself instead of just assuming. (It's like my mother always told me...when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me...) But I bet that if I found a good LARP group, it would be equally delightful. I have yet to see if Vampire will become a favorite of mine or not, but I've learned that I can definitely tolerate it if need be. Having said all this, I now return you to your regularly scheduled Web page perusal. Thanks for indulging me. (c:

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