Didn't Knights of the Dinner table have a storyline about BA Felton's losing players to Vampire?
I remember it similarly. Can't recall the timeline exactly, but I do remember Vampire being quite big at one point in the 90s and seriously challenging D&D (and I also recall some of the Ravenloft books at the time appearing to respond to that). There were also things like Everquest threatening to take players away. And magic was a huge drawn locally on some o fate campaigns I was in (I remember hemorrhaging players to magic at one point). Then TSR went under. Then WOTC bought them out (and I just assumed the Magic people were going to sit on the IP or make it more like Magic the Gathering). When 3E did come out, a lot of us were very skeptical (I remember swearing to continue playing 2E). But within a year everyone I knew was playing 3rd edition and it brought a lot of stuff back to D&D that, in hindsight, it really needed.