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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 3175485" data-attributes="member: 12332">One of the hottest selling, and most rapidly growing, subgenres of "Fantasy" right now is the "Supernatural Romance" ... you can find these in both the romance section (for the totally overt bodice-rippers) and the fantasy section (for the books that, well, got picked up by those wings of the publishers).Supernatural Romance usually focuses on a female central character, who may or may not be a supernatural creature herself, and her relationships with supernatural creatures.  It's been around for a while, but if you walk into your average Big Name Bookseller today and pick up half a dozen books you've not read in the fantasy section, you're going to get 2-3 Supernatural Romances.Laurel K. Hamilton has made a disgusting amount of money writing them.  What it says to me, as a layperson with a particular interest in what the genre markets look like right now, is that:1)  Women are a very large market.  Large enough to play to in big numbers.2)  Women dig vampire sex.3)  Vampire sex sells ... even when it isn't very good, because there's a big market out there that just wants to read about women with vampires.I don't know exactly WHY ... psychologically speaking.  Has something to do with the death/sex reproductive reflex, I think.  Vampires represent a lot of things ... death, power, immortality.  Vampires are "bad boys" and seem to trigger that "bad boy" danger/attraction thing.  And vampires of either gender seem to be able to pull off leather pants.  There aren't alot of real people out there that can pull off leather pants without looking like a total rube.  Even very attractive and athletic people often can't pull off leather pants.So she figures everybody wants to be a vampire because SHE wants to be a vampire ... and, for her, it's probably tied up in her reproductive response.  So since SHE's attracted to the vampire mythology, she figures everybody else just HAS to be sitting around waiting to vicariously live out their own Vampire Pr0n fantasy at the table.Which, even if I were into vampires, which I'm not ... I wouldn't be comfortable, myself, in somebody's "This Turns Me On, Doesn't It Turn You On?" RPG.  That sounds like Discomfort City, honestly.But, the larger issue is, you've been disenfranchised as a player.  This seems to be a pretty common theme with "I'm Telling A Story" type GMs.  The story overshadows the people playing the game.  "Flavor" or "genre tropes" begin to stomp all over "fun" and "playability".  It happens, and sometimes I'm even left thinking:  "Man, GMing this would be loads of fun if it weren't for the darn players."  Especially when somebody decides to come up with a character concept that defeats or works at cross purposes with the type of story I was hoping we'd be playing.I suck it up and deal, though, because I can always go write a friggin' short story.  Gaming is not an authorial release.  It's gaming.  Everybody is supposed to have fun.So, like my suggestion to another poster ... have fun with what you CAN do.  You've been disenfranchised as a player, the power is no longer in your hands as far as the game and story go ... that means you can do whatever crazy thing it is that you want to do.  Make being a powerless pawn into the fun focus of your gaming night.  Swing from the rafters, get into arguments with powerful vampires.  Make a flow-chart and see how many vampires your mage character can get romantically involved with.  Ham it the heck up:  "Oh, mighty Azreal Shadowfang, though I am a straight male non-vampire ... I am ... curiously attracted ... to your ... fangs ... take me, you fool, before I awake from this dreamscape!"She's not going to off your character, she's just going to keep looking for more and more ways to embroil you in her weird fetishistic romantic fantasy.  So dive in.  Make what you can of it.  Show out.  Sort of like the old cartoons where when the kid got caught smoking the dad would force them to smoke a pack or carton of cigarettes.  Give her so much crazy and convoluted vampire sex-fantasy that she gets sick and sated off of it ... maybe then she'll end the campaign and let somebody else run something.  --fje</blockquote>

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