VtM is probably my second-most-played RPG of all time, behind only D&D. For a good number of years there, from about 1995 through to 2005, I played endless hours of that game. And so by rights I should be quite excited that it's finally getting a new (fourth? fifth?) edition.
Sadly, no.
The sad reality is that I largely grew out of Vampire: the Masquerade. By the time I ran my last game, I'd actually reached a point where I'd done just about everything with the game that I'd ever want to do with it. It was simply played out.
But, also, VtM was very much a product of its time. Firstly because we've largely moved on - it's all about zombies these days. And secondly because VtM stood at the start of the long media process that somehow turned evil bloodsucking fiends of the night into sparkly stalkers of drippy girls. (And, later, into the bondage-loving heroes of mummy-porn fanfic, but by then they'd ceased to be vampires and become something worse: plutocrats.)
Thirdly, though, Vampire had a very distinct end-of-the-world vibe going on, with the ever present threat of Gehenna. This was largely because the Millennium was right around the corner when it was first released, and they built on that extensively.
The problem being that when the Millennium got here and the end of the world turned out to be a matter of a few mobile phone networks being overly busy for a few hours, it lost a huge amount of its attraction. Millennial angst is rather less appealing from the other side.
Actually, that seems to be a general problem with apocalypses in general. Judgement Day came and went unremarked (a fact that hasn't stopped them making another three Terminator films, and two seasons of a TV series, since then); the Millennium was a mobile phone outage; the Mayan Apocalypse turned out to be a few minor traffic jams. It's getting so we can't trust end-of-the-world panics at all. But that's another rant.
Still, good luck to them. I'm not really complaining that there are more RPGs on the market, even if I personally am not going to buy. It's just a shame to realise that I game I played extensively back in the day has reached a point where I just don't care any more.
No comments:
Post a Comment