A storytelling game of personal horror ... the RPG that brought character and imagination back into the industry... a pretentious angstklutch for self-important goths... Pick a comment, any comment. They've all been used to describe Vampire: the Masquerade at one point or another. Whatever its faults or merits, you can't say it hasn't been a lightning rod for discussion.

People have called it everything from the greatest RPG of all time to a work of pure unadulterated evil. Its honesty has been praised in the same breath that its arrogance is condemned. Its constant emphasis on roleplaying contrasts to the breaking point with power gamers who can use it to create transcendently obscene godlings as PCs.

Needless to say, it's a bit of a minefield. And I didn't even mention the sex parts.

Much of the controversy, however, isn't based so much on Vampire itself as on the way it has been received. Its phenomenal success - and the way it turned the industry on its ear when first released in 1991 - has clouded its merits as a simple RPG. The struggling young company that produced it has become a publishing giant, and subsequent products they've released have been unable to duplicate the same ground-breaking power of the original, despite obvious efforts to the contrary. (It's very difficult to swallow claims of staying on the "cutting edge" from a company in bed with Aaron Spelling).

Therefore, as time goes on, it becomes more and more difficult to remember just how great the game itself is.

Vampire's primary genius lies in its approach to horror, and the way it gets away from the "PC as Purina Monster Chow"" motif of other horror RPGs. The characters here aren't fearless vampire killers, or other "normal" humans battling against the horrors of the night. Instead, they are themselves vampires, powerful members of a secret undead society hidden from prying eyes. Forced to survive on human blood, they must struggle with the horrifying truths of their condition while simultaneously weaving their way through the s ter Machiavellian plots of their fellow "Kindreds."

This ba sic set-up produces an atmosphere unheard of in other RPGs. The characters are far more powerful than almost any human or group of humans they may encounter, yet they cannot hope to match the older and much more powerful vampires invariably occupying the same area. Combat is therefore eliminated, or at least deemphasized considerably. Instead, players must outthink their opponents if they want to get anything done, relying on verbal sparring, sharp observance, and sheer guts to meet their goals.

Character development and player interaction take center stage, and success in measured not by how many bodies pile up, but in how the PCs grow and change in response to their environment.

Then there's the much ballyhooed "inner demons" factor. As vampires, the players must hunt humans and drink their blood in order to survive. There is an inner "Beast" which subsists on that need and drives the characters to greater and greater acts of depravity as time goes on. The character must undergo a constant struggle with this Beast, feeding it enough to slake its desire, but never letting it gain the upper hand. Commit too many depraved acts, and the Beast takes over forever; you become a raving monstrosity under control of the GM from then on.

The inner demons factor does facilitate the sort of pretentious gothic moaning that the game has become infamous for, and can reduce the funfactor of a given session to the point of nil. But more importantly, it shifts the horror emphasis of the game from "what will this horrible monster do to my hapless PC?" to "what might I do to this hapless NPC?"

The external threat is made internal, which again stresses character and individual action over simple slugfests. It also has the effect of preventing the more slaughteroriented players from going completely off the deep end - which is critical in a game where PCs are so powerful. "Waxed the whole bar, did you? Well, sorry, you can't come down from that berserk rage, and the Prince has put a contract out on your head. Hand over your character sheet an kiss your undead butt goodbye..."

Such advantages easily overwhelm the more theatrical downsides to its presence. And only the most nihilistic group of players will let its gloomy trappings overwhelm their campaign.

Vampire's system is another triumph, a great means of promoting player balance and character emphasis. Skill and attributes are determined on a point attribute system - starting characters are allotted a set amount of points to assign to their various abilities.

Transcendentally obscene godlings aside, it keeps the characters evenly balance while allowing for a great deal of variety and depth. Skill rolls are determined by the number of points you have in the appropriate attribute and/or skill, rolled against a difficulty number. The number of time you roll that number or higher, the more successful you'll be. Combat is fast and furious, although rarely fatal considering what the characters are, and the experience system is tied firmly to the game's overall theme of character and role-playing.

To be sure, much of Vampire's atmosphere has its origins elsewhere, and praising it on that merit alone is dangerous. There is a large chunk of other writers in there, particularly Anne Rice, whose Interview With the Vampire seems almost tailormade for the game. Interview's success was the first widespread break from the model set by Dracula, and neatly encapsulates the "humanity within the monster" theme that Vampire thrives on.

The game owes a large debt to Rice, and to other authors like her; calling its world and the themes it embodies a ground-breaking piece of genius is simply untrue, and performs a disservice to the writers on whom it so obviously draws.

Vampire's strength, however, lies not in its use of other material, but in the way it has created a viable gaming framework where that material can come to life. Vampire players quickly learn that being a monster is much more complicated than first appears, and that a high price must be paid for the tremendous powers and astounding abilities their characters can exercise. Can one maintain a sense of ethics while being forced to kill innocents?

Can one transcend the gruesome necessities of vampirism and use its advantages for positive ends? It's quite difficult for a game to present such conflicts without becoming either overly complicated or too dependent upon GM whims. Vampire does it. And it does it in a way that is simple, effective, and very entertaining. If their ideas aren't always ground-breaking, the way they present them to us certainly is.

And in the end, that's more than enough for the product to earn its place in RPG history. After all the pretension, after all the gothic moaning, after all the bungled Aaron Spelling TV shows, there's still a great game lying at the heart of it all. A game that really has changed the industry, in many good and lasting ways.

Whatever its faults, Vampire: the Masquerade has accomplished what few others have done, or even tried to do. In one flash, it pushed the envelope of role-playing in a new and enriching direction, and for that, we should all be thankful.