Good Old Days

It turns out that there are still many people that enjoy a good game of pen-and-paper roleplaying.

So I went in search of my old player's manual for Vampire: The Masquerade(pictured left). Upon finding my old character sheet the memories and nostalgia came flooding back, of late nights in a small theatre with a group of drama students pretending to be vampires. The epic adventures that played out there were the stuff of legend.

But what makes the games by White Wolf so amazing (and a little scary) is the fact that these future-changing revolutions could be taking place right under our noses, for real, and we would never know...

I called up a few friends and asked around and everyone seemed keen, so we all got together one evening with the player's manual and worked out our characters. We all then spent the next week thinking about our characters and developing them from mere pieces of paper to living (I use this term lightly) breathing members of society.

If you're familiar with Dungeons & Dragons you'll know how most roleplaying games work: The chronicler (a.k.a. narrator a.k.a. dungeon master) tells the story up to a point, then stops. It's the duty of each player to state what their character would do in that situation. A few minutes of stats-comparing and sometimes arguing commences, followed by a round or two of dice-rolling (with dice that have between 4 and 20 sides). Then the story can continue based on their successes or failures. What made The Masquerade unique in its day was focus on the theatrical more than the mathematical. Your character sheet was only there as a reminder. The real character, with full background story and entire family trees and political structures, was in your head. During play, when a challenge is presented a quick calculation and a single dice-roll is all that was needed to find out what happens. The story can then continue. It made for much faster paced gameplay and much more amazing stories. And indeed, the stories were told, because when you retell the tale of your adventure you portray it as if you are the person who experienced it, not the character sheet!

Over the last week I've been combing the internet for information on The Masquerade, but it was replaced by a game called The Requiem(pictured right). No longer are the vampires an entity on their own. They are part of a much greater and sinister system known as the World of Darkness in which anything can happen, from ghosts to werewolves, in the tradition of horror stories the world over. I'm doing my best to find the books required to start playing the newer game, but not before the adventure of our Masquerade has concluded, which can take up to 3 months of weekly meetings.

With PC and console games as sophisticated as they are these days, it's good to know that we can still enjoy a good old-fashioned game of pretend, even if it is with some help...

The games also encourage you to read, so I find it especially suited for players in their low teens who are still in touch with their imagination, but who get bored when reading a book like we old people (early twenties). Once you've played a few hours with friends, you start wondering about the story behind the story. And it's all there. Beside the player's manuals and a guide for storytellers, there's a whole selection of books that widen the fictitious universe. Some of them have nothing to do with how the game is played, but are simple storybooks that serve to enrich the mental image you have of this world beneath our everyday lives.

However, it's not for everybody. The whole theme of this genre is very dark and brooding. If you struggle to keep a straight face while telling a ghost story, you would be better off playing a science fiction or fantasy game. World of Darkness is for the goths among us. Serve with Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Anathema and especially Katatonia.

To Close: If you've never played a pen and paper roleplaying game, there's a very big gap in your education. In my opinion it's something that everyone needs to do at least once in their life.

Words:
"The cleansing astringence of rejection" is the most ridiculous phrase I have ever used in a comic."
-Questionable Content