THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
KU OCTOBER 24,1995
GETTING A TASTE OF Blood
Role players of the game Vampire have found in it the opportunity to act out their horrific fantasies
Story by Hannah Naughton Illustration by Matt Hood
Isibeth was born in 1583. She was embraced in 1605. A vampire drank the blood from her body, and, as she was dying, he brought his own blood to her lins. As she drank it hungry.
she took with her sirse's blood the curse of immortality. She now is a 142-year-old vampire living in secrecy with her kindred in Kansas City.
Linda Bell, Gales Ferry, Conn., freshman, created the character of Elsibeth a year ago for the role playing game Vampire, produced by White Wolf, a company that creates storytelling games.
"She's a part of me because I did create her," Bell said. "But I'm not her. I don't know if I could be."
With the recent interest in vampires, brought about to a large degree with the popularity of author Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles," the game has gained a favorable response.
James Allen, clerk at Fun and Games, 816 Massachusetts St., said that the game was at the height of its popularity a couple years ago, about the same time the movie "Interview with a Vampire" was released.
"We've all seen the horror movies like 'Bram Stoker's Dracula,' Bill said. "There's always been a fascination with vampires. We wonder what it would be like to have the chance to be something other than yourself for a few hours."
In role playing games, players assume the roles of characters that they have imaged. They participate in a campaign, guided by the game master, or in the case of Vampire, the storyteller. The campaign has a setting and common goal or plot, created by the storyteller, but the outcome of the plot is open-ended, manifesting from the interaction and imaginations of the players in their roles.
"I like Vampire because it has such a mature theme," said Wade Jones, Milford, Conn.
senior. "It's not the hack and slash role playing. A lot of thinking can be done with it. It's always more fun if you have to work at it."
Jones has role played for 16 years. He has played Vampire since it was first released more than five years ago.
"It was kind of revolutionary," Jones said. "It took things from a different perspective than the traditional role playing bent. It's not 'How can I defeat the bad guy',' it's 'How can I keep myself from being evil, confronting it in myself.' No one had tried to do that mature of a theme before."
Vampire is played in two ways, table top and live
"Live action is more like theater," Jones said. "There's more of an emphasis on props and costume. The players are also in character all the time."
In table top,players only
tell other players what their characters are doing, instead of acting the character's actions as live action players do.
Jones prefers table top. Bell's group plays live action.
She and her group attended the opening night of "Interview with a Vampire" in character and costume, including fangs. She said that she spooked some of the people because she remained in character when they approached her.
Both styles are played with the same rules and both have storytellers.
Jones is a storyteller for his game. It is important to have strong character development for a story line to proceed well, Jones said.
Characters have their own goals and these goals overlap with other characters. The storyteller sets a broader goal for the game and tries to cultivate it around the constantly evolving web of individual character goals.
Bell chose the Tremere clan, one of 13 possible clans, to base Elsibeth. This means her character has a strong history of mysticism and magic. She chose the nature of Elsibeth to be hedonist and have a demeanor of a jester.
From this generation, Bell developed Elsibeth's character within the plot and adhered it to what that character would do in various situations.
"The storyteller is responsible for everything but the characters," Jones said. "I control everything from the weather, the music in the background, the people you interact with on the street to who's elected president next year."
The players use the rules from the Vampire books to generate a character. As they play, that character is developed, Jones said.
"We try not to advocate kill Ghouss — which are creatures who are still mortal but are bound to vampires because they have tasted vampire blood," Bell said. "But I have had to kill a Ghoul because that is what Elsibeth would have done."
Vampire also is different from other role playing games because it is set in modern times. Bell said.
In her campaign they blew up Bartle Hall, she said. This was not the direction the storytellers had anticipated, but it was the direction the characters took. The National Guard was brought in and a night curfew was imposed on the city. Then, they had to create a way to remove the curfew so the vampires could go out again at night, since they can't go out in sunlight.
It is important to keep the backdrop of the plot as realistic and developed as possible so the players can concentrate on developing their character, Jones said. He researched San Diego for one of his campaigns and used a few maps so he could bring stronger details to that story.
"If you go to see a movie that was done poorly, you'll say, 'That's the worst special effect I've ever seen,' Jones said. "You can't concentrate on the characters in the film. It distracts you from the people."
Jones said that it was a chance to get away from everyday life where science was emphasized and imagination was trivial.
"This game, in part, sees itself as trying to resurrect the lost art of storytelling," he said. "People these days rely on the printed word or a five dollar movie on a Friday night. With something like this we can create our own fiction."
Lead Story
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