They creep into the night. Some paint their hces white with red specks of blood. Others wear long cloaks to conceal their wispy undemourished frames. The rest appear perfectly normal, not unlike you or me. They gather together in hotel conference rooms across the country to share in a night of conflict, feasting, and hntasy. A fantasy in which they're stalking, blood-thirsty vampires. Unfortunately, some people there seem a little shaky on the fantasy part. I decided to join a convention-sponsored liveaction role playing game of Vampire: The Masquerade. Basically, a bunch of High School Drama Club dorks get together and pretend they're undead. Since I am one of those myself, I seemed qualified to play. The rules are unclear to me but seem to involve a lot of yelling and waving your arms around. I looked forward to joining them in their sickening orgy. Right off the bat, I was disappointed. The evening's objective was not to suck the life from innocent, virginal hotel guests, but to unite the feuding vampire clans together. What happened to Von Helsing? The leaky castles? The garlic? Apparently they don't do that "Stoker stuff'. When we broke into smaller groups to discuss what had to be done to achieve our dubious objective my spirits sagged. "Hearken to me! The other Clans will not hear of us uniting and will strike us where we stand!" As the speaker droned on in a nasal, Shakespearean tone I stared in disbelief. Did he really say, 'Hearken? What good ghoul talks like he is hawking sausages at the Renaissance Faire? If there were any justice, Bela Lugosi's morphine-preserved corpse would've made an unannounced visit and given this faux-fiend some speech lessons. I was also astonished at the stupid looking hats some people were wearing. I'm not talking about hooded cowls or gauzy veils (which would be acceptable), but leather sahri hats, purple velveteen raver's headgear, soiled baseball caps, and even a cowboy hat! What ever happened to a good old-fashioned widow's peak haircut? Is that 50 out of style? When did Morrissey's Xtacy-loving fans become the poster children for the undead? I blame Anne Rice. I blame those Sandman comics. I blame YOU for standing by idly while the very concept of vampire mutated into something hip and sexy! I left the game, grabbed my trusty pitchfork and flaming torch, and marched back to my peasant village vowing to become a minion of the true Romanian cyber- vamp, Dracula. The monsters I left behind would pay for their disrespect! It didn't take long for my plan to unfold. A new Aaron Spelling TV show based on the very same Masquerade mythos premiered the other night. That program will expose these faithless creatures to a media glare so high, it will turn them into dust faster than sunlight ever could. What moody hipster would want to simply rehash a TV show like a common Trekkie? Those punks will crawl back into their hidey-holes faster than you can say Melrose Place Live Action Game. Now that's something I could get into. Matt Patterson (drbubonic@aol.com) is the editor of Ooze magazine (www.io.com/~ooze). He would also like you to hire him to sit around his house all day for fabulous sums of cash. Back to Shadis #25 Table of Contents Back to Shadis List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines © Copyright 1996 by Alderac Entertainment Group This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com