Tag Archives: Vampire: The Masquerade

Curtis Baxter

Game: Vampire: The Masquerade (first edition – White Wolf, 1991)

My Experience: Oh, dear gods. I was introduced to VtM in late 1992 or early 1993. My first actual play experience was the LARP at RiverCon ’93 at the Holiday Inn Hurstborne. At the same con’s LARP the next year, I met most of the core of what would become the Louisville Gaming Mafia, and we’ve been in and out of each other’s lives ever since. I also was a contributing writer on a number of VtM projects back in the day.


Curtis Baxter, Anarch Vigilante

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I love it when a coterie comes together.

In 1872, a crack team of archons was sentenced to destruction by the Ventrue Justicar for a crime they didn’t commit. These Kindred promptly escaped from a maximum-security conclave to the Anarch Free State. Today, still wanted by the Camarilla, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem… if no one else can help… and if you can find them… maybe you can hire… The V-Team.

Before They Let Me Teach Again

I wrote this a couple of years ago to get it out of my head. Occasionally, I consider submitting it to my current employer’s University Honors Program to see if they’ll let me teach it in place of my occasional disaster preparedness seminar. Lightly redacted to remove contact info and other potentially-incriminating items.


Honors Seminar Proposal: Your Parents’ Dark Futures

Primary Instructor

Clayton Oliver, M.S., CEM – Emergency Manager

Will there be any additional instructors for this seminar?

Additional instructors are not anticipated.

Has this seminar been presented before?

No. This proposal is for a pilot delivery.

Do you think this seminary should qualify for International Perspectives or US Diversity Credit?

No.

Please select how you would like to offer the seminar.

Two credits. Two class hours per week. Full semester.

An enrollment cap of 20 is recommended for this pilot delivery.

Please enter your preferred teaching days/times/location for the seminar.

A Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday evening slot is preferred. A weekly two-hour block is necessary due to the extended collaborative/narrative nature of some class activities. My recommended time is 6pm-8pm.

Preferred location is Jischke Honors Building 1151+1155 for student convenience and the ability to “pod” the room’s seating for breakout groups.

Please describe any additional meetings that may occur outside of normal course hours if applicable.

No scheduled meetings are planned at this time. However, students will be expected to convene for group activities outside class time. Students will schedule these group meetings on their own.

Please write a brief description of the seminar that is attractive to students and will be shared on our website.

In the 1980s, the emerging entertainment medium of roleplaying games (RPGs) began to reflect the political and socioeconomic concerns of the day. In this seminar, we’ll analyze four RPGs of that era, each of which postulates a different dystopian near future: Twilight: 2000 (1984, post-World War III survival), Cyberpunk: 2020 (1990, hypercapitalist science fiction), Vampire: The Masquerade (1991, urban decay and power imbalances), and Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1992, political corruption and ecological collapse). Through reading, class discussion, collaborative storytelling, supplemental research, and reaction papers, we’ll examine the fears, assumptions, cultural stereotypes, literary archetypes, and social trends that produced these works and ask ourselves if they remain relevant today. We’ll also analyze the storytelling craft of roleplaying as a means of exploring and expressing identity – our own and that of others.

For the University Honors Committee, please briefly outline the seminar’s readings, topics, assignments, and expectations. Seminars are graded Satisfactory/Fail; what must a student do to pass your seminar?

During this seminar, the class will be divided into four groups of five students, each of which will examine one of the four selected works. A successful student will be able to:

  • Articulate an understanding of the cultural factors that produced the selected work;
  • Discuss the literary archetypes inherent to the work that shape the narratives which players can use the work to construct;
  • Discuss the identities and assumptions inherent in the work’s archetypes and how they are relevant or outmoded in today’s society;
  • Contextualize the work’s postulated dystopian future within the time it was authored and describe how subsequent historical events support or undermine its fictional setting;
  • Articulate the value of roleplaying for self-examination, problem-solving, and empathy.
  • Contrast the work’s original context to the modern era and argue whether or not the work could be reproduced in today’s environment.

Readings

Each student will be assigned one of the four selected works as a primary reading. These are available commercially in PDF format for between $10 and $20 each.

Readings will be synchronized across the semester to examine:

  • Setting – what is the world described in the game? How does it relate to the societal trends and fears of the era in which it was written? How accurate were its predictions?
  • Player characters – what are the implied and explicitly-stated roles of players and their in-game personas? How do these roles and the game’s provided character archetypes facilitate the exploration of identity or the concerns the game raises?
  • Gamemasters – what are the implied and explicitly-stated roles of gamemaster/referees/storytellers? Is their relationship with the players one of collaboration, antagonism, or something in between?
  • Stories – what sorts of stories is the game intended to facilitate?
  • Mechanics – how does the game model its world? What mechanisms does it provide for resolving uncertainty or conflict? Do the rules facilitate the stated storytelling goals?

Actual Play

Most roleplaying games are designed as group experiences, so reading alone will not enable students to examine the full experience. Over the course of the semester, each group will be expected to meet for a minimum of five game sessions, play the game, submit short written response/reflection papers, and be prepared to discuss their experiences in class. I will attempt to arrange groups to ensure that each one contains one experienced gamemaster who is comfortable running the assigned game, with the other four group members as players.

The standard attendance policy for Honors Seminars is that only two absences are allowed unless there is a special circumstance. If you prefer a different attendance policy, please explain.

This attendance policy should work.

Please include a summary of your background to include with the seminar description on our website.

Clayton Oliver is the university’s Emergency Manager. He is a recovering technical writer, having spent twelve years writing documentation no one read for software no one installed. In 2012, he decided to pursue a more frustrating career and entered the emergency management field. Since then, his disaster response experience has included power outages, severe winter weather, derechos, home football games, hazardous materials spills, overly-enthusiastic student celebrations, that one time someone accidentally drilled into a natural gas pocket, and a pandemic that no one wants to hear about any more. He holds a B.A. in English, an M.S. in Emergency Management, and the Certified Emergency Manager credential from the International Association of Emergency Managers. He maintains proficiency in his former craft through performing freelance design work in the roleplaying game industry, posting on the university’s subreddit as [redacted], and writing about himself in the third person.

Hell Comes to Cave City

Another ConCave, another unfortunate encounter.

In this instance, several of us had decided we were hungry and the hotel diner was overpriced. But that vaunted mecca of civilization, Cave City, was nearby! And our hero protagonist victim had a car! Thus it was that four people squeezed into my ’99 Mitsubishi Eclipse, truly the gothiest of goth rides, to seek sustenance.

Two of the witnesses shall remain nameless. The third passenger, he whose reputation burns in infamy even today, shall be called WB, he who sometimes was called “Wookiee” for his stature and lack of a volume control. WB was about 6’6″, not a small man in width, made mostly of metal from the knees down, and aggressive in asserting his identity as Louisville’s largest and most notorious Jewish goth punk gamer bookmonger.

So it was that the four of us sauntered into a combination Long John Silver’s/A&W (i.e., the Fish&W) restaurant. I was attired fairly nondescriptly, as was my habit. My companions… had only brought Vampire LARP costumes to the con.

Needless to say, we attracted some attention on this fine Saturday morning. Our kind was rarely seen in Cave City. There were murmurs of outrage and consternation.

I, being attuned to the ways of incipient redneck unrest, was uneasy. My unnamed companions, alas, were more sheltered. And WB… WB was aware of the attention and was feeling provocative.

As we dined, WB’s volume increased. Every French fry brought forth another bloody tale of in-game vampiric horrors, presented out of context for the Barren County public’s edification. I began gauging the distance to the exits.

Finally, our trays were empty. Could we escape without incident? Alas, WB had one more arrow in his quiver. As we discarded our waste and headed for the exit, his voice boomed out: “Hey, Clayton, you know the best thing about this leather jacket?”

I cringed. “No, WB, what would that be?”

And as the door swung shut behind us, the last thing the good folk of Cave City heard was WB’s proud declamation: “A little rain water washes the goat blood right off it!”

Decomposition Book

No shit, there I was…

This was in spring ’98 or ’99, I think. I was running a LARP at ConCave, a small local convention in deep rural southwest Kentucky.

I was minding my own business at my registration and logistics desk when a pack of prospective players staggered into the room in what was either a Fleshcrafted gamer-centipede mass or a consensual close-order formation of mutual support for upright locomotion. It was just past three in the afternoon and I could smell the liquor and questionable decisions from across the room.

“Heeeeey,” one slurred, fumbling in his pin-festooned leather vest for what I hoped was not a weapon. “I heard yer runnin’ a Vamfire game.”

Trepidatiously, I responded in the affirmative.

“Awesome.” He located the object of his search and withdrew, to my rmingled relief and slowly-rising dread, a small wad of paper. As he unfolded it like some non-Euclidean eldritch origami horror, I recognized it as a character sheet. It appeared to have been used as a placemat for last night’s pizza and this morning’s coffee, and under the layers of organic debris, the owner’s pen had left no dot behind. “I wanna bring in my home chara… chiro… character. I call ‘im ‘Roadkill.’ He’s a Samedi wererabbit Abomination.”

The Cocaine King of Barren County

Back in the ’90s, the western end of Kentucky had a surprisingly lively World of Darkness LARP scene. No one ever could explain why Bowling Green (40,000 people and four last names) was a major strategic focus for the Camarilla and Sabbat, but hey… nerds gonna nerd. But interactions with non-players were always interesting because this was not generally, shall we say, a progressive or well-read region. No, friends, this was – and is – a place where Justified is a documentary.

At the time, there was a regional sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention, ConCave, so named because it always ran in an old, raggedy hotel adjacent to Mammoth Cave National Park. It was a small con, a peaceful con, a con at which the old SF/F fandom could relax, reminisce, and spouse-swap. At least… it was peaceful until Vampire: The Masquerade LARPs became a thing and the region’s LARP community was looking for a con, any con, at which to gather.

All names have been obfuscated to protect the damned.


My comrade FB was playing a Setite drug lord. FB was decked out in his finest business attire. FB also went all-in on props. Including a briefcase. A briefcase full of sealed bags of powdered sugar.

About 0200 on Saturday morning, the first night of play was winding down. Due to a con hookup – not his, more’s the pity – FB found himself locked out of the hotel room he’d arranged to share with another player. Disgusted and sleepy, he staggered down to the hotel’s pool room, dropped his briefcase on a ping-pong table, threw all of his other props into it, and crashed under the table.

Unfortunately, he left the briefcase open.

Because of con shenanigans in previous years, this hotel had hired a local sheriff’s deputy as night security. Around 0300, Deputy Toothless was making the rounds when what to his wondering eyes did appear but the largest drug bust in the history of Barren County. Doing his due diligence as an officer of the law, Roscoe P. Coleslaw roused FB and dragged him and the “evidence” down to the night manager’s office to await an on-duty deputy. And perhaps the DEA. With a news crew or three. And a promotion. Maybe even a future run for the sheriff’s election!

So there FB was, somehow not handcuffed, in the manager’s office. The night manager was horrified. Deputy Toothless was giddy and accusatory. The sheriff, when he arrived, was skeptical – and not amused at being called at home at 0300. FB was tired and cranky and his back hurt from trying to get comfortable on the floor.

I am informed that the conversation with the law amounted to this:

FB: Look, Sheriff, you can run a test kit on it if you want, but if I had this much cocaine, would I be staying in this f’ing fleabag?

S: You’re free to go, son. Deputy… we need to have us a talk.