Quote from: Omega on October 22, 2024, 05:30:25 AMAnd in the 90s saw a huge retooling along with several other supernatural themed superheroes and eventually teamed up into Midnight Sons in the early 90s. I had the early issues and it had a strong mystery of the week feel to it with an underlying interconnection with the Darkhold.

Massively more broad in variety of creatures compared to the Blade movie's focus on just vampires.

  I'm not certain, but I think a Midnight Sons boxed set was planned for FASERIP before TSR lost the license.

EDIT: A Google search confirms that it was not only planned, but David Pulver got a first draft written. But it's currently locked up in old data formats and legal issues, so there's no way to get a hold of it.

Quote from: yosemitemike on October 21, 2024, 09:47:04 PM

Quote from: Omega on October 21, 2024, 09:32:57 PMBlade at least is older than the Ann Rice books. The movies though barely scratch the surface.

Blade was changed quite a bit from the original version to the one that was in the Wesley Snipes movie.

Yeah I don't know to what extent the Blade movies were inspired by VtM, as I never read the comics, but they certainly felt like they were. The Underworld movies definitely looked like they were just a cross between WoD, Blade and the Matrix.

Quote from: ForgottenF on October 22, 2024, 09:06:01 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on October 21, 2024, 09:47:04 PM

Quote from: Omega on October 21, 2024, 09:32:57 PMBlade at least is older than the Ann Rice books. The movies though barely scratch the surface.

Blade was changed quite a bit from the original version to the one that was in the Wesley Snipes movie.

Yeah I don't know to what extent the Blade movies were inspired by VtM, as I never read the comics, but they certainly felt like they were. The Underworld movies definitely looked like they were just a cross between WoD, Blade and the Matrix.

I don't think so. I think they were influenced by general trends seen in fiction around the time.

I don't see anything in the Blade movie that cannot be traced back to works that predate WoD. Like, sympathetic vampires go back to at least the 1960s. Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows, Carmilla in Hammer Horror... Anne Rice described vampire covens back in the 1970s. Familiars? Goes back to Renfield. Secret societies specifically dedicated to keeping their existence a secret? Goes back to at least The Vampire Lestat. Multiple types of vampires in the same story? Goes back to at least Captain Kronos in the 70s, and Nightlife did so in 1990.

Even the idea of connecting werewolves with a superficial exoticized misunderstanding of Native American folklore goes back to at least Wolfen in 1981.

Strangely, I cannot think of a single common trope in urban fantasy that can be traced back specifically to WoD. It just isn't influential. It's so derivative and generic that there's nothing in the broader genre that can be traced back to it.

I find this odd. Given its brief popularity in the 90s, you'd think at least some of the fans then would grow into writers and have that influence their work. But I just don't see that.

Dresden Files has multiple types of vampires, so does Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. None of them are particularly comparable to Mark Rein-Hagen's work: their subspecies are very much not distinguished by bizarre high school clique stereotypes like fashion designer, jock, the weird kid, or basement dweller computer hacker.

What do you think?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 22, 2024, 10:42:01 AM

Quote from: ForgottenF on October 22, 2024, 09:06:01 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on October 21, 2024, 09:47:04 PM

Quote from: Omega on October 21, 2024, 09:32:57 PMBlade at least is older than the Ann Rice books. The movies though barely scratch the surface.

Blade was changed quite a bit from the original version to the one that was in the Wesley Snipes movie.

Yeah I don't know to what extent the Blade movies were inspired by VtM, as I never read the comics, but they certainly felt like they were. The Underworld movies definitely looked like they were just a cross between WoD, Blade and the Matrix.

I don't think so. I think they were influenced by general trends seen in fiction around the time.

I don't see anything in the Blade movie that cannot be traced back to works that predate WoD. Like, sympathetic vampires go back to at least the 1960s. Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows, Carmilla in Hammer Horror... Anne Rice described vampire covens back in the 1970s. Familiars? Goes back to Renfield. Secret societies specifically dedicated to keeping their existence a secret? Goes back to at least The Vampire Lestat. Multiple types of vampires in the same story? Goes back to at least Captain Kronos in the 70s, and Nightlife did so in 1990.

Even the idea of connecting werewolves with a superficial exoticized misunderstanding of Native American folklore goes back to at least Wolfen in 1981.

Strangely, I cannot think of a single common trope in urban fantasy that can be traced back specifically to WoD. It just isn't influential. It's so derivative and generic that there's nothing in the broader genre that can be traced back to it.

I find this odd. Given its brief popularity in the 90s, you'd think at least some of the fans then would grow into writers and have that influence their work. But I just don't see that.

Dresden Files has multiple types of vampires, so does Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. None of them are particularly comparable to Mark Rein-Hagen's work: their subspecies are very much not distinguished by bizarre high school clique stereotypes like fashion designer, jock, the weird kid, or basement dweller computer hacker.

What do you think?

In WoD documentary, I don't remember if they downright say they copied from them or left it at "heavily inspired", but True Blood tv show (based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels) has parallels to WoD lore. It's possible the changes were enough that WW couldn't sue them like they did with Underworld.

As for Blade, they used WoD artist Timothy Bradstreet's drawings without his permission. Someone working on the movie told Bradstreet who rightfully said "so you used my artwork but didn't thought of contacting me?" Guillermo del Toro personally hired him for Blade 2 and he is credited as "vampire designer" there.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 22, 2024, 10:42:01 AMDresden Files has multiple types of vampires, so does Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. None of them are particularly comparable to Mark Rein-Hagen's work: their subspecies are very much not distinguished by bizarre high school clique stereotypes like fashion designer, jock, the weird kid, or basement dweller computer hacker.

What do you think?

Honestly? I can't even label the Clans of VtM as subspecies. The physical differences between them are utterly trivial and societal differences come down almost entirely to the Embrace/admission policies... meaning they literally ARE cliques and while you call them "high school" I've seen just as many in supposedly adult organisations like government (the local election board is hilarious) and corporations (gossip mongers, sportsbros, barflies, sales sociopaths, the HR Karens club, IT department, etc.).

Humans are just naturally prone to assigning In- and Out-group status to each other. Formerly human immortals stuck with mostly each other for genuine company (as in capable of understanding you) dividing themselves into cliques over stupid centuries or millennia old spats and grudges (and then creating progeny based on who will reinforce their positions) is probably the most realistic thing about the WoD vampires. That they're predators who see each other as potential competition and can't turn to things like sex to destress and alliance-build because they're sterile and only feeding gives them any pleasure is just arsenic-laced cherry atop the crap sundae that is normal intersocial politics.

The most unrealistic thing is how Vampire society hasn't been discovered by the masses given how utterly petty and out of step with the times they are and how flamboyant both their powers and sunlight allergies are (not to mention flipping out at the sight of even trivial flames). The number of vamps with broad spectrum memory erasure is pretty small and the number of potential witnesses on a nightly basis makes murdering them all pretty much impossible without drawing even more attention to the situation.

Werewolves have the Delirium and a lot of the crazier stuff happening in the spirit world to protect them (the same for ghosts and changelings). Mages are fundamentally human, DO have a lot of flexible mind effects, and get punished by the universe if they're too obvious (to the point of sometimes even getting erased from existence begore you were born just so the blatant magic you fired off never got cast).

The most annoying thing about WoD vampires, especially cross splat, is their daylight allergy is so severe they basically cannot work with other types of supernaturals without copious handwaving. Not only can they be burnt to death by even reflected twilight sun (so mid-summer in the midwest they might have only seven hours from the last flicker of twilight at dusk to the morning twilight before dawn... even at the winter solstice at my latitude there's still only 12.5 hours between twilights), they also turn into a sack of potatoes during daylight hours... even waking up when someone is setting you on fire takes an act of extreme willpower and only for a few seconds before you fall back asleep again at that.

In a campaign were I was playing a dhampir, my biggest advantage over the other PCs (and vampire NPCs) was by simple dint of having 16+ hours of active time a day, every day, much of it coinciding with normal business hours (and with Stamina 5 I could often do a couple days without sleep or long stretches with just four hours a night).

Trying to incorporate that into a cross splat campaign where it's not one PC you can speedrun through their daylight activities with, but a large chunk of the party is actively diurnal and doesn't have your insane sleep requirements. The vamp PC is either missing vast swaths of the adventure or the rest of the party is twiddling their thumbs for 6-10 hours each day while waiting on the vamp.

Now, it's less an issue for my Hunters setting; if full vampires sleep all day it's not going to place restrictions on the PCs. Even so, I feel its more interesting to limit the sunlight aversion to what would be manageable for PCs. The big one would just be that, like Dracula, many of their powers are severely diminished by daylight. If you're only super strong and quick and able to hypnotize at night then you'll likely just adopt a nocturnal lifestyle to get the most advantage from your powers without even needing a sunlight allergy.

If I did impose a sunlight allergy it would probably just be to the direct sun so that indoors activity and life in the concrete canyons of a cyberpunk megacity are less curtailed.

Quote from: Lythel Phany on October 22, 2024, 11:06:20 AMIn WoD documentary, I don't remember if they downright say they copied from them or left it at "heavily inspired", but True Blood tv show (based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels) has parallels to WoD lore. It's possible the changes were enough that WW couldn't sue them like they did with Underworld.

As for Blade, they used WoD artist Timothy Bradstreet's drawings without his permission. Someone working on the movie told Bradstreet who rightfully said "so you used my artwork but didn't thought of contacting me?" Guillermo del Toro personally hired him for Blade 2 and he is credited as "vampire designer" there.

What parallels? That all sounds like reaching to me. I'm familiar with the lore of all of those and there's zero indication that they copied or were inspired by Mark Rein-Hagen's work in particular.

Using artwork by Tim Bradstreet? He did plenty of other stuff outside of WoD. There were plenty of other artists involved in movie production too.

If you read the Underworld lawsuit, it's pure pareidolia. Their so-called "80 points of similarity" are bullshit. One of the points is this: since the leader of the Death Dealers is a black man, then Sony must be copying the Arab ninjas from White Wolf's game. Wow, real convincing!

It's all bullshit pareidolia. Seriously, give me all the parallels you can see and I'll discount every single one with citations to older works and folklore.

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 22, 2024, 12:44:28 PMwhile you call them "high school" I've seen just as many in supposedly adult organisations like government (the local election board is hilarious) and corporations (gossip mongers, sportsbros, barflies, sales sociopaths, the HR Karens club, IT department, etc.).

Unfortunately true. However, those still aren't political blocs. They don't have representation in politics. We don't have positions in our government to represent the interests of the Fashion Designer Party, the Jock Party, the Weird Kid Party, etc.

In Mark Rein-Hagen's world building, the vampires actually base their entire political system on a high school clique structure. Their idea of politicking has nothing to do with real politick and everything to do with interactions between high school cliques. None of the cliques actually have any kind of policies or anything like what an actual political party would have. They're defined solely by shallow features like hobbies or physical appearance.

Even European politics, which normally deal with multiple parties, have nothing in common with these high school cliques. Every party has actual policies that they're trying to legislate. For example, the Pirate Party constantly tries to loosen copyright law.

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 22, 2024, 12:44:28 PMHumans are just naturally prone to assigning In- and Out-group status to each other. Formerly human immortals stuck with mostly each other for genuine company (as in capable of understanding you) dividing themselves into cliques over stupid centuries or millennia old spats and grudges (and then creating progeny based on who will reinforce their positions) is probably the most realistic thing about the WoD vampires. That they're predators who see each other as potential competition and can't turn to things like sex to destress and alliance-build because they're sterile and only feeding gives them any pleasure is just arsenic-laced cherry atop the crap sundae that is normal intersocial politics.

The bit about seeing each other as competition sounds like it would cancel out the part about recruiting people for their social clubs based on superficial hobbies.

Vampires are still individuals. It doesn't make sense that they would maintain the same clique structure they did 10,000 years ago when any vamp could gather together like-minded individuals and form a new clique. The game even expects the default party to consist of multiple unrelated vampires from different cliques, even though that contradicts the established clique structure.

There's even turnover in the vampire governments. The vampires who rule currently are not the same ones who ruled 10,000 years ago. The setting makes a big deal about its gerontocracy, but then doesn't commit to it. In V5, it even follows up on this by introducing the Beckoning as the latest explanation for turnover. I know a lot of grognards hate it, but it's actually true to the lore. The world building issue comes in when you take into account the generation statistic. This acts as a hard limit on a vampire's power and the global average has been weakening over time. Eventually the vampires will go extinct as a result of this periodic culling.

Vampire: The Requiem neatly solves this issue by ditching generation in favor of blood-potency that can rise or fall over time depending on circumstances. As blood-potency rises, vampires accumulate more banes and ennui and stuff, and the most accessible way to escape it is by hibernating. The Invictus covenant exploits this by being a mix of gerontocracy and meritocracy: elders eventually hibernate a la Underworld, allowing younger vampires to assume their positions. If you want to, you can even start play as an 80,000 year old vampire from the lost continent of Mu who has been depowered to starting PC level as a result of this.

I don't see the appeal of the gerontocracy because I get enough of that stupid bullshit in real life and I play games for escapism. But I digress.

---

Anyway, that whole high school clique stuff is actually something I would consider very much a defining characteristic of WoD and it's very conspicuously something I don't see in urban fantasy. Whether or not the two occur in the same work, there don't seem to be many original works that have multiple types of vampires or vampires that organize into cliques.

I did find this European tv show from 2019 called Heirs of the Night that was about teenage vampires from different families coming together and teaching each other their powers so that they can survive against the Church's hunters and the revenge of Dracula (he's an antagonist too). The structure is so different that I cannot say there's any clear influence from WoD here. It does use the word "clans", but that's circumstantial evidence at best. The clans were geographically isolated in different parts of Europe and so developed their cultures and powers in isolation for centuries before recent events forced them to open contact. Furthermore, there's two types of vampires: those who were born vampires and those who were turned by and subservient to the born vampires. It's based on a series of YA novels written by a woman born in 1966. She would've been in her late 20s by the 90s. I don't know how likely it is she would be familiar with the German LARP scene at the time, but I don't see any clear influence either way. The story itself isn't about politics but about working together, the complete thematic opposite of WoD.

You have any idea why we don't see more vampire inter-species and inter-clique politics in urban fantasy stories? Maybe I'm not reading the right stories, but I've gone through various rec lists and 99% of the time it's romance and the only clique conflicts are the heroine deciding which hunky clique leader she dates.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 22, 2024, 10:42:01 AMStrangely, I cannot think of a single common trope in urban fantasy that can be traced back specifically to WoD. It just isn't influential. It's so derivative and generic that there's nothing in the broader genre that can be traced back to it.

I find this odd. Given its brief popularity in the 90s, you'd think at least some of the fans then would grow into writers and have that influence their work. But I just don't see that.

Dresden Files has multiple types of vampires, so does Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. None of them are particularly comparable to Mark Rein-Hagen's work: their subspecies are very much not distinguished by bizarre high school clique stereotypes like fashion designer, jock, the weird kid, or basement dweller computer hacker.

What do you think?

I don't follow the genre with anything approaching enough diligence to be able to comment on the lineage of its ideas.

As regarding the non-appearance of a broader urban fantasy genre, to the extent that's true I suspect you can explain it in a single word: Twilight.

Only partially joking there. Twilight was simultaneously so successful and so hated that it's not implausible to suggest that it tarnished the whole genre. Combine it with things like the Anita Blake series, and people get the idea that Urban Fantasy is a genre for lonely, overweight goth girls. Not a lot of people want to associate themselves with that image. In general, the Vampires vs. Werewolves subgenre of urban fantasy was pretty well tied in people's minds to the goth/industrial/nu-metal 90s subculture, that became seriously uncool somewhere around 2006, and hasn't come back around to being in style yet (though it almost certainly eventually will).

Urban Fantasy as a wider genre has plugged along in the meantime. Carnival Row, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel and Penny Dreadful were all reasonable successes as far as I know, but it seems like people are more comfortable with it as a period piece, usually Victorian/Regency/Edwardian type periods.

Quote from: ForgottenF on October 22, 2024, 09:06:01 AM

Quote from: yosemitemike on October 21, 2024, 09:47:04 PM

Quote from: Omega on October 21, 2024, 09:32:57 PMBlade at least is older than the Ann Rice books. The movies though barely scratch the surface.

Blade was changed quite a bit from the original version to the one that was in the Wesley Snipes movie.

Yeah I don't know to what extent the Blade movies were inspired by VtM, as I never read the comics, but they certainly felt like they were. The Underworld movies definitely looked like they were just a cross between WoD, Blade and the Matrix.

Vampires having some form of organized society goes back well before Ann Rice. There was a big vampire kick in the early 70s. Rice, King and many others were part of it. Then it kind of percolated till about the 90s and boom theres vampire movies left and right. Right around the same time as a popular vampire RPG.

WOD came out at about the perfect time.

Vampires had covens and cults before, but outright conspiracies of many dozens living secretly in metropolitan areas seems to be an invention of 80s fiction at the earliest I could find. I'm not counting vampire plagues ruled by a master, since those don't seem to have any kind of culture.

George Martin's 1982 Fevre Dream may count, but it doesn't go into much detail on organization beyond covens.

I did more research, and it turns out that Fevre Dream's vampires are descended from the biblical Cain. At least, one of the vampires in the story speculates about this being the case. This novel was published in 1982!

So yeah, the number of ideas supposedly invented by Mark Rein•Hagen keeps growing smaller the more research I do.

There's pagan cultist snake vampires in the movie Lair of the White Worm, three-eyed soulsuckers come from the anime Sazan Eyes...

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 23, 2024, 09:01:42 PMThere's pagan cultist snake vampires in the movie Lair of the White Worm

If it turned out that VtM based a vampire clan on Lair of the White Worm that would become one of my favorite bits of trivia ever. I absolutely love that movie. Kinda doubt it, though. If we're talking about the Followers of Set clan, then it seems like the just proceeded from the assumption that vampires are descended from Cain and then followed the Cain -> Satan -> Set line of connections.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 23, 2024, 09:01:42 PMI did more research, and it turns out that Fevre Dream's vampires are descended from the biblical Cain. At least, one of the vampires in the story speculates about this being the case. This novel was published in 1982!

So yeah, the number of ideas supposedly invented by Mark Rein•Hagen keeps growing smaller the more research I do.

There's pagan cultist snake vampires in the movie Lair of the White Worm, three-eyed soulsuckers come from the anime Sazan Eyes...

With fantasy in general I think nearly all the individual elements have been done before. What makes something distinguishable as original to the genre is the particular combination of elements employed, possibly with one unique thing to make it stand out.

In VtMs case it was combining a bunch of vampire elements in one place and being the first to make an RPG where the vampires are the protagonists. Which is why nothing in that particular sphere of playing as a vampire has really eclipsed it. If you're doing vampire protagonists in a modern setting exclusively, you're competing with something that was the gold standard for that; to the point even it's successor brand and attempt at a soft reboot basically get unfavorably compared to the original.

Which is why if you're going after urban fantasy you really need your own non-vampire unique thing. I have mine (Catholic Urban Fantasy with Cyberpunk seasoning), but for others looking at doing something in the genre I think the advice holds... don't make vampires your sole or even primary focus (they don't  have to be absent, just don't make them the center of your setting 's universe) and find some other unique angle.

Quote from: ForgottenF on October 24, 2024, 07:42:56 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 23, 2024, 09:01:42 PMThere's pagan cultist snake vampires in the movie Lair of the White Worm

If it turned out that VtM based a vampire clan on Lair of the White Worm that would become one of my favorite bits of trivia ever. I absolutely love that movie. Kinda doubt it, though. If we're talking about the Followers of Set clan, then it seems like the just proceeded from the assumption that vampires are descended from Cain and then followed the Cain -> Satan -> Set line of connections.

It probably comes from Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. He invented an evil snake god called Set. Mark Rein•Hagen took that, linked it inaccurately to the Egyptian deity Set, and the rest is history.

It's really weird, because changing their founder/deity to Apophis would've neatly solved the Egyptology gaffes. Set is the Egyptian equivalent of Loki, not the Devil.

In Vampire: The Requiem, they finally fixed this by making the Cult of Seth into demon hunters/tricksters with shadow powers. Then cancelled it.

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 24, 2024, 08:14:57 AMWhich is why if you're going after urban fantasy you really need your own non-vampire unique thing. I have mine (Catholic Urban Fantasy with Cyberpunk seasoning), but for others looking at doing something in the genre I think the advice holds... don't make vampires your sole or even primary focus (they don't  have to be absent, just don't make them the center of your setting 's universe) and find some other unique angle.

Even that doesn't seem to work. There have been numerous attempts at urban fantasy games without centering vampires and nothing sticks.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on October 22, 2024, 08:28:17 AMI'm not certain, but I think a Midnight Sons boxed set was planned for FASERIP before TSR lost the license.

EDIT: A Google search confirms that it was not only planned, but David Pulver got a first draft written. But it's currently locked up in old data formats and legal issues, so there's no way to get a hold of it.

The Unofficial Canon crew have done Midnight Sons, and TONS of horror supplements for Marvel. They have one that is exclusively for Vampires and Occult characters. It's pretty amazing. In fact the last MSH game I ran was mostly occult stuff and had little to do with the "supers" aspect of Marvel. It felt more like Sandman/Dr. Strange where the heroes were dealing with Vampire Cults (literal Antediluvians from pre-flood Atlantis.) and it felt very "WoD" but with more power.

Quote from: ForgottenF on October 24, 2024, 07:42:56 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 23, 2024, 09:01:42 PMThere's pagan cultist snake vampires in the movie Lair of the White Worm

If it turned out that VtM based a vampire clan on Lair of the White Worm that would become one of my favorite bits of trivia ever. I absolutely love that movie. Kinda doubt it, though. If we're talking about the Followers of Set clan, then it seems like the just proceeded from the assumption that vampires are descended from Cain and then followed the Cain -> Satan -> Set line of connections.

I agree... Lair of the White Worm is a classic. That and Salem's Lot (the original) had a huge influence on me when it came to writing Vampire lore.