Vampire the Masquerade's origin - is this True???

[Ralif Redhammer]

My recollection from the World of Darkness documentary (which is well worth checking out) is that the origins of Vampire go something like this:

Every trip to Gen Con, White Wolf Games would take a route that led them through Gary, Indiana. Dismayed by the urban blight, one of them asked "who even lives here?" To which another person replied "vampires," sowing the seed that would grow into the game.

And that's why Gary, Indiana was the featured location in the original release.

 

[Endie]

The range of cultural sources and inspirations for V:tM was huge. This was most obvious if you bought earlier printings of the first edition of the game, as they were jam-packed with quotes from books, films and song lyrics.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

This leads me to believe that the quality of an Underworld movie is directly proportional to the amount of screen time Bill Nighy has in it.

Well, that makes perfect sense.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Nancy Collins was super-influential in the late 1980s/early 1990s and I'm sure Mark Rein-Hagen read Sonja Blue novels, along with Anne Rice. But although he was definitely influenced by a lot of stuff (like Near Dark and many other influences, most of which show up as their own VtM clans), I don't think it's fair to say his work was "based" on any one novel, nor the larger World of Darkness that followed.

Like D&D before it, the World of Darkness is a bunch of exciting stuff put into a blender, lightly chopped, and then something new is made from the mix.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"Everything written by Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Milan Kundera, Herman Hesse, Albert Camus, P.B. Shelley**, Mercea Eliade, Ayn Rand & (of course) Vaclav Havel."

This might be the most early White Wolf thing ever written.

 

[Willie the Duck]

This might be the most early White Wolf thing ever written.

I feel like it's missing Michel Foucault, Slavoj Žižek, Machiavelli, and maybe Lord Byron.

 

[Sossij]

This leads me to believe that the quality of an Underworld movie is directly proportional to the amount of screen time Bill Nighy has in it.

This could be said for many things.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I feel like it's missing Michel Foucault, Slavoj Žižek, Machiavelli, and maybe Lord Byron.

Quickly writes up all four as vampire elders who will summarily shoot down the players' plans.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Quickly writes up all four as vampire elders who will summarily shoot down the players' plans.

I'd argue some might be mages instead, and Žižek definitely gives off werebear energy to me.

 

[Endie]

Quickly writes up all four as vampire elders who will summarily shoot down the players' plans.

We can make space in the splat books by dropping a few of the simultaneous versions of Rasputin as vampire elder, werewolf etc.