Author: Mr. Spooky (---.mindspring.com)
Date: 11-03-2001 02:21
Conan's article and some of the posts on this thread have singled out Vampire and discussed its merits and/or flaws as a horror game. Since I've got nothing better to do at 4:30 in the morning, I'm goint to throw in my 2 cents.
Reading through the core rulebook, Vampire's full of horror possibilities--loss of identity, having to drink people's blood, suddently being thrown into a secret world you don't really understand, and a few others.
Of course, if you look at an actual Vampire game, you don't see any of that. It's basically a bunch of people who aren't cool enough to hang out at the local goth club talking in bad accents and playing at politics. The supplements don't really help get back to the horror--they tend to give new cool powers or tell about the local undead politics (This is White Wolf responding to their audience, which I can't begrudge them for).
Part of this is the nature of RPGs. Since most RPGs are group activities, it's hard to effectively bring out the personal horror of actually becoming a vampire. You've pretty much got to start with a group of characters who are already vampires. The bigger problem is the mindet of most gamers. Games have traditionally been power fantasies, and where's the power in being afraid, confused, guilty, or whatever? In order to fulfill those fantasies, players quickly figure out how to power game the setting rather than (or in addition to) the rules. Instead of having a +8 "to hit" bonus, the Vampire character has a Contacts, Status, or Wealth.
A huge problem is that in order to comprehend the loss a character experience when becoming a vampire, you really have to establish what he had to lose in the first place. While a strong background can help, it's hard for a fifteen-minute Prelude to really drive the point home A couple friends of mine had great success with expanding the Prelude. (See http://208.56.99.04/dc/oct00/Column-ETE.html for details.) Of course, that was in a solo game--the group aspect makes this problematic, in general. Besides, at soem point even the most sensitive character will deal with his loss.
Luckily, there's still the whole "drinking blood" thing. The book seems to indicate that this should be a big focus of the game. It should be a horrific experience. Unfortunately, the book undermines this with the "Hunting" system. Since there's nothing horrifying about rolling some dice, this is bad. of course, the reason for the system is obvious--after a while, the blood-drinking will become routine, and even the best GM won't be able to communicate the horror of the experience after it's happened 10 or 20 times.
Well, at least we've got the uncertainty of a brand new world, don't we. Nope. All characters are brought before the prince pretty quickly and told all the details. They're brought right into the secret world, given an employee handbook, and assigned to a cubicle.
There is some room for horror after that, but it's very rarely exploited. Even when it is, the Vampire element isn't that important. It becomes a conspiracy game, and all the scares come from what the conspiracy might acheive, what it could do to you or your friends, and similar stuff. GURPS Illuminati has about as much scare potential (probably more, since Illuminati characters are mere mortals).
To sum up, there is great horror potential in Vampire. Unfortunatly, it's almost all in the first few sessions. After that, the horror potential's not any greater than any other game.
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