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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clavis" data-source="post: 4989464" data-attributes="member: 31898">I don't think that's thread-jacking at all, because it directly bears upon the the game market of the early 90s versus today.Regarding Vampire, I can speak to my own experiences. My High-School game group was still playing 1st Edition AD&D past graduation and into 1993 (for a period of the late 80s and very early 90s 1st Edition and 2nd Edition materials were both easily available). By 94 our girlfriends expressed an interest in gaming something other than D&D. The D&D group didn't really want to convert to 2nd Edition, because we thought it had lost the "edge" that 1st edition had. I had seen Vampire advertised in Dragon, so I suggested it to everyone. "You get to play Vampires" was all the women needed to hear to want to play. My AD&D game had already been role-play and story heavy, and we had even started doing a small amount of quasi-live action play. So the Live-action part of Vampire was an easy fit for the group as a whole, and really what kept the women interested. The actual group of players became majority female, and I understand that was fairly usual. Our games wound up about 90% live action, with us only sitting down and breaking out dice for combat scenes.I think a lot of Vampire's initial popularity was a result of male players of 1st Edition who were into heavy metal, felt that 2nd edition had lost the "evil" edge they wanted from a game, and had Goth girlfriends who were into vampires. Those Goth girls were a major part of the playership, perhaps even the actual majority. And they played because it was a chance to be a vampire, not because they had any interest in other RPGs. D&D (or any other RPG for that matter) can never capture those players.The fact that the Vampire books had edgy vampire art and fiction in them were a real draw. A lot of AD&D players never actually owned the game, but Vampire players wanted to own the books. Nobody that I know of bought Vampire for its game mechanics. They were interested in the subject matter and presentation.</blockquote>

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