After renting The Lost Boys from my local video store, when I was 14, and falling in love with the vampire genre through Queen of the Vampires, Anne Rice. But one thing really got me hooked; that was Vampire the Masquerade, the roleplaying game created by Mark Rein-Hagen and the team at White Wolf Game Studio. This game changed my life.
Its hard to imagine it all started 25 years ago, when mystical Europe was the setting for a roleplaying game called Ars Magica. This mythical version of our real Europe would be the partial inspiration for one of the greatest vampire universes of all time. It was around this time, that Mark on a long road trip to GEN CON with original Vampire: The Masquerade artist Josh Timbrook was inspired to create the World of Darkness after having seen the original film The Lost Boys. He took that concept along with other inspirations such as Anne Rice and Bram Stoker and expanded upon them greatly.
In the 1990s Vampire the Masquerade set the stage for the vampire genre, bringing it to the next level. It introduced organized secret societies of vampires, clans and bloodlines with unique characteristics and cultures, and an entire “World of Darkness” of werewolves, changelings, ghosts and mages.
Vampire the Masquerade inspired books such as the Southern Vampire Chronicles which became the hit TV show True Blood and was the very basis of the Underworld Vampires vs. Lycans film series.Yes vampires and werewolves mythically were most often friends before Vampire the Masquerade introduced this eternal struggle.
Live action roleplaying (LARP) was also greatly influenced, and widly popularized by Vampire the Masquerade’s LARP edition, Mind’s Eye Theatre, which came on the scene in 1993 with a LARP version of Vampire produced by Mike Tinney and Ian Lemke of Night Owl Productions in Harrisburg PA. Instead of sitting around a table, players get into full costume and makeup and, along with anywhere from a dozen to 500 other players, act out the storyline in a location such as a nightclub, theatre, or warehouse. It’s a lot like immersive, improve theater, but with vampires Vampire helped make LARPing cool as it was really the first time that women were attracted to LARP.
I first got into the fangsmithing business through the LARP scene when I entered in 1992.
After almost a decade and a half of dormancy, like the recent Star Wars revival, fans my age (as of this blog post I am 410 years old, an easy way of saying a GenXer at 41 lol) who were exposed to Vampire the Masquerade are dedicated to a major comeback and revival of their beloved hobby.
Last year, around Halloween, video game developer Paradox Interactive of Stockholm Sweden announced they acquired the rights of the entire World of Darkness line from CCP Games of Iceland. CCP merged with White Wolf in 2006 in hopes of making a MMORG of the World of Darkness. They make a highly successful computer game EVE. Fans of White Wolf were excited and as the World of Darkness MMORPG team worked their tails off CCP slowly chipped away at the over funded project (some say $70 million was wasted on this project which did look amazing).
CCP Games didn’t share the passion with World of Darkness fan base and they felt they were taken hostage. Now with the resurrection of White Wolf Game Studio by Paradox Interactive things are looking like they are back on track.
On September 1 to 5 2016 the luminaries of the World of Darkness including Mark Rein-Hagen, Stewart Wieck, Tim Bradstreet, Shane DeFreest, Mike Tinney, Jason Carl and new White Wolf Publishing Lead Storyteller Martin Ericsson and CEO Tobias Sjogren will gather in New Orleans to celebrate 25 years of this beloved franchise for The Grande Masquerade convention. It’s almost an entire week of activities bringing together the creators and fans in a fiesta of fangdom for the game which changed many lives including mine. These are the individuals whose passion has kept Vampire: The Masquerade alive.
Congrats my friends, I am excited to see what you bring to the future of one of the greatest and most influential roleplaying games in modern times since Dungeons & Dragons.
Rock and roll…
You can check out the Grande Masquerade at http://www.masqueradebynight.com, live roleplaying at http://www.bynightstudios.com and the main White Wolf website at http://www.white-wolf.com
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