Acknowledging The Monster Within

It was a cold October afternoon in 1991 when I had my first introduction to Vampire: the Masquerade. I'd been invited to a potluck on my college campus sponsored by some new "gothic fan club". While I didn't look like a goth- too fat, too cheerful, too much color in my wardrobe- the gothic counterculture fascinated me. Like so many others of my generation in that time and place, I'd embraced paganism, cynicism, bisexuality, and had a taste for the macabre in art and literature. There were thirty people at the potluck, including four close friends I hadn't expected to see: my Shadowrun RPG group!

None of us had told each other we were planning on coming. It was a little embarrassing but fun to see us all blush there in our powdered faces as we sipped red cool-aid from mock plastic goblets. The coordinator of the event told us all about The Camarilla, the VtM fan organization and his intentions for the Olympia chapter. We were to be the second city to host a Camarilla chapter, with him as our Prince.

Later that night my RPG group started playing Vampire the Masquerade.

The Shadowrun books were all put away, never to be picked up again. Copies of the first edition of VtM began appearing all over my house. I read them over and over, memorized both game mechanics and setting. The color left my wardrobe. I spent more and more time reading, role-playing and thinking about White Wolf games. Nothing had prepared me for my friends and I, part of the campus' "gaming geeks" had been transfigured into the "coolest group around".

Yet the ugly side of human nature began to surface. In-game politics and characters started taking a second seat to interpersonal intrigues and grudges between players, both in table-top and LARP. Gossip and rant sessions started taking place daily. As the decade passed, I made a number of boorish mistakes and selfish choices in the name of my own "fun" with White Wolf games, forgetting that I was only one voice in many, and all those voices deserved to be acknowledged. I had become an "elitist"- arrogant and vain.

In VtM, the "Beast" represents a vampire's most dark and uncontrollable passion to destroy. When it is unleashed, the Beast will wantonly destroy anything in its path, bringing about its master's own destruction if it cannot be contained. Like so much else in White Wolf games, the Beast is symbolic of something intrinsic to human nature. We the players also have our own "beast" that grows stronger with hate, jealousy, and fear. When we lose control, we hurt those around us through words and actions that represent what we are feeling "in the heat of the moment", not our true intent. We become monsters.

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