Retrospective: Vampire: The Masquerade

Continuing with my recent trend of posts that have proven inexplicably contentious, I have decided to do a Retrospective post for White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade, a game considered by some fans of old school RPGs to represent a major point at which the hobby took a seriously wrong turn. My own opinion of the matter is considerably more nuanced than that, but I agree that the publication of Vampire in 1991 does mark an important hinge point in the evolution of roleplaying games.

If, like me, your introduction to RPGs was through Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade felt like it had come from another world. Where the focus of D&D was on adventure broadly defined, Vampire was about mood, metaphor, and personal horror. It didn’t merely offer a new set of rules, but a fundamentally different vision of what roleplaying games could be. It was brash, stylish, and theatrical in a way that felt almost confrontational to the sensibilities of "traditional" roleplaying games – and I suspect that was intentional.

Even if you didn’t play Vampire – and I didn't and still haven't – you couldn’t ignore it. By the mid-1990s, Vampire was everywhere: at conventions, in hobby shops, and in the imaginations of a younger generation of gamers for whom roleplaying didn’t begin with The Keep on the Borderlands, but in the nightclubs and dark alleys of White Wolf's "gothic punk" setting. Whatever else you might say about it, Vampire captured the Zeitgeist with almost supernatural precision. The Cold War was over, cyberpunk had gone corporate, and angsty antiheroes were ascendant in pop culture. Vampire gave roleplayers a way to inhabit that mood and make it their own.

Looking back, the game’s presentation probably played a big part in its success. The rulebook looked very different from those of other games on the market. It was filled with fiction, quotes from Schopenhauer and the Indigo Girls, brooding black-and-white artwork, and a relentless focus on theme. Its mechanics, such as they were, often took a backseat to emotion, identity, and esthetic. Character creation prioritized personality, inner conflict, and one’s place within a secretive, decaying society. The World of Darkness, as it came to be known, was more than just a setting. It was a tone, a posture, and a subculture, for good and for ill.

For players of old school D&D or Traveller, used to thinking of characters as problem-solvers and adventurers, Vampire was jarring. Here, the emphasis wasn’t so much on overcoming external challenges, but internal ones. What mattered wasn’t what your character could do, but who he was, what he felt, and how far he’d fall into monstrosity. The oft-parodied “angsty vampire with a katana" stereotype, while real, obscures just how radical this idea was at the time. Vampire: The Masquerade was – or at least aspired to be – a roleplaying game where introspection and tragedy weren’t just permissible but central.

From a mechanical standpoint, Vampire was a bit of a mess. Its Storyteller system was vague, inconsistent, and sometimes begged the question of whether mechanics mattered at all. Of course, it wasn’t designed to support dungeon delving or tactical combat. Instead, it aimed instead to foster collaborative storytelling, character drama, and social intrigue. For many players of the game, it more than succeeded in this aim and its approach to roleplaying soon became not only widespread but, I would argue, the norm.

The game also changed who played RPGs. Vampire brought in a lot of people who'd never played a roleplaying game of any kind, thereby changing the face of the wider hobby. Its gothic, romantic esthetic was attractive to these newcomers in a way that dragons, starships, and mutants never could be. Beyond that, Vampire inspired live-action roleplaying on a scale previously unseen and encouraged a style of play that emphasized character, emotion, and interpersonal drama over puzzles and tactical challenges. Like it or not, Vampire's impact was immense – to the point where the game was once a serious challenger to D&D's hegemony.

From the perspective of old school play, Vampire remains, in most respects, an alien creature. It’s driven more by narrative intention than by exploration or open-ended play. The referee – sorry, Storyteller – is often expected to have a plot and characters are meant to fit into it. That almost certainly rankles those of us for whom the oracular power of dice and emergent play are the acme of roleplaying. Even so, it’s impossible to deny what Vampire accomplished. It dared to be something different and, by doing so, it opened doors. Whether or not you liked what was on the other side, you had to admit it was impressive that someone found a key.

It’s fashionable nowadays to treat Vampire: The Masquerade with irony or to blame it for the sins of later trends, like over-emoting, railroading, or the tyranny of the tragic backstory. While there's more than a little truth to these jabs, I also think it does the game and its influence a disservice. Much like Dungeons & Dragons itself, Vampire was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment that was simultaneously bold, flawed, and genre-defining. It clearly gave roleplayers, especially younger ones, something they were craving, even if they didn't quite realize it at the time. Even though I was never a huge fan of the original game – I liked several later World of Darkness games better – there's no denying its power.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: Physics and Falling Damage

And so we return to falling damage once again.

Issue #88 (August 1984) presents a lengthy article by Arn Ashleigh Parker that uses physics -- complete with equations! – to argue that neither the as-published AD&D rules nor the purportedly Gygaxian revisions to same from issue #70 adequately reflects "the real world." Here's a scan of some of the equations Mr Parker uses in his article:

I'm sure it says something about my intellectual sloth that my eyes just glaze over when I see stuff like this in a roleplaying game. The very idea of having to understand acceleration, terminal velocity, and the like to arrive at a "realistic" representation of falling damage is bizarre enough. To do so as part of an argument against earlier rules is even more baffling. D&D's hit point system doesn't really stand up to extensive scrutiny if "realism" is your watchword. In my opinion, devoting so much effort to "prove" that terminal velocity is reached not at 200 feet as in the Players Handbook system or at 60 feet as in the revision but at 260 feet is a waste of time better spent on making a new monster or a new magic items – things that actually contribute meaningfully to fun at the game table. But I'm weird that way.

Amusingly, issue #88 also includes a very short rebuttal to the above article by Steve Winter. Entitled "Kinetic Energy is the Key," Mr Winter argues that, if one considers the kinetic energy resulting from a fall, you'll find that its increase is linear, thus making the original system a surprisingly close fit to the "reality." He makes this argument in about half a page, using only a single table (albeit one that draws on the earlier equations). While I agree with Winter that the original system is just fine for my purposes, it's nevertheless interesting that the author also makes his case on the basis of physics, as if the important point is that AD&D's rules map to facts about our world. It's a point of view I briefly held as a teen and then soon abandoned, for all the obvious reasons. Back in 1984, though, this was the height of fashion and many a Dragon article proceeded from the premise that the real world has a lot to teach us about how rules for a fantasy roleplaying game ought to be constructed ...

In Defense of Bob

His name wasn’t really Bob, but I’m calling him that for the purposes of this post, on the extremely unlikely chance that he’s still out there somewhere. It’s been decades and I doubt he’d even remember me. Still, I don’t want to be cruel; there's already plenty of that online. Moreover, that's not my purpose here.

Bob was a teenager I’d see from time to time at hobby stores and at game days at the local libraries in the early 1980s. Like many of us back then, Bob was awkward, intense, and very passionate about the things he loved. For him, one of those things was World War II.

In those days, this was hardly unusual. I’m not sure people younger than a certain age realize just how omnipresent World War II still was in the cultural imagination of the time, even though it had ended more than three decades beforehand. This was especially so in the years after Vietnam, when America seemed unsure of what to make of its recent history, World War II stood apart. According to its conventional presentation, it was “the Good War,” the one where we knew who the bad guys were. Toy aisles were filled with green army men and gray tanks. TV reruns still showed Combat! and Rat Patrol. There were countless paperbacks, comics, movies, documentaries, and model kits. Nearly everyone had at least one older relative or neighbor who’d been “over there.”

So, Bob’s obsession wasn’t strange, not in context. What was unusual, even among kids interested in World War II, was the depth of his knowledge. Bob didn’t just know the basics. He could name operations and battles most people had never heard of. He knew the names of generals and details about their lives. He could tell you how a Panther tank compared to a Sherman and why Rommel’s tactics in North Africa were studied in military academies around the world. He was, for a teenager, astonishingly well-informed. 

Bob was also socially tone-deaf. He didn’t always know when to stop talking, particularly when the subject was German armor or the Eastern Front. Even back then, people would roll their eyes when Bob launched into another lecture about Stalingrad. Mostly, though, we just let him do his thing. He was weird and so were we. More importantly, he played RPGs. That was enough.

Nowadays, I'm sure Bob would be viewed differently. People might hear him talk about German tanks or Guderian’s campaigns and jump to conclusions. They might assume he was some kind of Nazi sympathizer or apologist. That’s not how I remember him at all. Now, I didn’t know Bob well. I didn't have a window into his soul, but I never once got the impression he admired Hitler or fascism or anything like that. He was just a very nerdy teenager who’d gotten fixated on a complex and highly documented period of history. He liked the minutiae. If anything, he treated World War II the way other kids treated baseball, obsessively reciting rosters and statistics no one else cared about.

Bob was not a threat. He wasn’t trying to smuggle dangerous ideas into the games he played. He was just Bob – one of us. He was weird, annoying, and even brilliant in his own narrow way. I feel like it's important to point this out, not to excuse anyone, but to defend the idea that not every interest held by socially awkward people should be a moral test. Likewise, not every off-note conversation from forty years ago is a sign of hidden malice. We were all a little odd in those days; that’s probably what brought us together.

I bring all this up in light of last week's post about my recollections of how odd people of all stripes seem to get along in the hobby of my youth. Back then, the hobby felt – to me anyway – like a patchwork of eccentrics, whether they were metalheads, stoners, bookworms, would-be game designers, history buffs, or, yes, kids like Bob. We didn’t all get along. We didn’t all like the same things. Yet, we shared a love of imaginative play and we didn't care about much of anything else.

Was that everyone's experience back in the day? I highly doubt it, but I also doubt that the worst examples someone could dredge up from those times was typical either. I suspect the truth, as it so often is, lies somewhere in the middle. Judging from the arguments in the comments to last week's post, I suppose I was naive in thinking we could get back to just having fun with RPGs the way I used to as a kid.

I don’t know where Bob is now or what he became. Wherever he is, I hope he has a group of friends with whom he can roll some dice without being judged too harshly for his idiosyncrasies. He deserves that much.

So do we all.

[Alas, comments must now be closed on this post too. —JDM]

Architect of the Modern Imagination

E. Gary Gygax died on March 4, 2008, at the age of 69. Just over three weeks later, this blog published its first post. That was no coincidence.

Though I’d begun reflecting seriously on old school Dungeons & Dragons in late 2007, shortly before I joined the ODD74 forums, it was Gygax’s death that galvanized me. His demise marked the end of an era and, for me, the beginning of a personal project to explore, celebrate, and better understand the legacy of the game he helped bring into the world.

Today would have been his eighty-seventh birthday. In light of that, I want to pause and remember the life of a man who, though I never met him, profoundly shaped my own. More than that, he shaped the lives of millions, often in ways so pervasive we no longer recognize their origin.

Volumes have been written about Gygax's career, his eccentricities, his talents, and his failings. Seventeen years later and more than half a century since the release of Dungeons & Dragons, it’s time to say something both bold and, I believe, undeniably true: Gary Gygax was one of the most consequential cultural figures of the 20th century.

That may sound hyperbolic, even to readers of this blog. Gygax didn’t lead a nation, win a war, or cure a disease. What he did do was co-create a game that fundamentally reshaped the imaginative landscape of the modern world. Just as significantly, he popularized it. Through passion, persistence, and a gift for theatrical self-promotion, he took a niche idea, half rooted in wargaming, half in pulp fantasy, and gave it structure, rules, and language. He turned it into something accessible, repeatable, and endlessly expandable. He turned it into Dungeons & Dragons.

In this, Gygax's closest analog is probably Walt Disney. Neither man invented his medium. Animated film predates Disney, just fantasy games predate D&D. However, both men synthesized their influences into a new form and then made it a fixture of mainstream culture. Disney did it with cartoons. Gygax did it with dungeons, dragons, and rulebooks put together in his kitchen.

From that small seed, a global phenomenon grew.

If that seems overstated, consider where we are in 2025. Playing Dungeons & Dragons is no longer a fringe entertainment. It is a cornerstone of pop culture. It’s referenced in popular films and prestige television. It inspires bestselling novels, hit video games, and streaming series. Its influence is everywhere, from the language of "hit points" and "levels" to the way we talk about our personalities in the shorthand of alignment. "I'm a chaotic good introvert," someone might say, without either irony or the need for explanation.

None of that was inevitable. Without Gygax, it’s possible that some form of roleplaying game would have come into being, but would it have appeared in 1974? Would it have spread as quickly or inspired so many imitators? Would the worlds of gaming and fantasy fiction look anything like they do today?

Gary Gygax’s true legacy is more than a single game. It’s a mode of thinking, a grammar of imagination. It’s the idea that you don't have to be content with simply reading about fantasy adventures; you can go on one yourself. He gave us the tools to build our own worlds, to share them with friends, and to lose ourselves in collective acts of creativity.

That’s not a footnote to cultural history. That is cultural history.

So yes, Gary Gygax deserves to be remembered and indeed celebrated as a visionary, a pioneer, and one of the key figures in shaping how we imagine and play in the modern age.

Happy birthday, Gary. You didn’t just help us imagine new worlds. You showed us how to make them.

An Amusement

Last night, a friend shared with me his "rebuttal" to my recent assertion that Traveller was "obviously" the best science fiction roleplaying game. 

I should add that, despite my devotion to Traveller — and, of course, Thousand Suns — I actually have genuine affection for Universe and would happily play in a game using its rules. It's an odd game, to be sure, but, much like its sibling, DragonQuest, it's got some interesting ideas buried within its complex rules, hence my continued fascination with it after all these years.

Initial Assessment of Unidentified Cereal Crop Pathogen

TOP SECRET//SCI//NOFORN

UNITED STATES MILITARY EMERGENCY ADMINISTRATION

OFFICE OF CONTINUITY INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY (OCIS)

JOINT FORCES COMMAND EAST (JFCE)

INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT REPORT

FILE NUMBER: BIO-INT-00-12D

DATE: 24 NOVEMBER 2000

PRECEDENCE: IMMEDIATE // RESPONSE REQUIRED WITHIN 24 HRS

SUBJECT: Initial Assessment of Unidentified Cereal Crop Pathogen (GR-93) in Virginia Agricultural Zones

DISTRIBUTION: TOP SECRET//SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION//NO FOREIGN DISSEMINATION

ACCESS RESTRICTED TO AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL WITH TS/SCI CLEARANCE AND NEED-TO-KNOW

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.1. A novel fungal pathogen, provisionally designated GR-93, has been identified in cereal crops across multiple agricultural zones in Virginia’s southern Piedmont and Southside regions. The pathogen exhibits abnormal resilience, extended latency, and resistance to standard fungicidal treatments, raising concerns of possible artificial engineering.

1.2. This incident occurs amidst national recovery efforts following the 1997–1998 limited nuclear exchange, with international trade routes degraded and traditional defense alliances fragmented or non-functional. The United States remains heavily reliant on domestic crop production. GR-93 poses a critical threat to national food security and public stability.

Three Models of Character Advancement

One of the aspects of Secrets of sha-Arthan that's been bedeviling me lately is character advancement. I've been trying to find an approach that both makes sense mechanically and feels appropriate to the setting’s tone and structure. I believe I’ve finally managed to thread that particular needle (something I’ll be talking about in more detail on Grognardia Games Direct next week). In the course of wrestling with the issue, though, I found myself reflecting more broadly on how roleplaying games have historically handled advancement and how those choices shape the experience of play.

After all, one of the more foundational elements of any RPG is its system for character advancement. How characters improve over time has a profound impact on gameplay. It shapes player incentives and directs the focus not just of individual sessions but of entire campaigns. While there are countless variations and hybrid models, I think most systems fall into three broad categories, each exemplifying a particular design philosophy. These categories are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive, but they are, in my experience, among the most common approaches used in games both old and new.

Objective Advancement: The Dungeons & Dragons Model

The traditional Dungeons & Dragons approach to advancement is probably the one most familiar to readers of this blog. Characters gain experience points (XP) for doing certain things, primarily defeating monsters and acquiring treasure. In OD&D and its descendants, including AD&D 1e, treasure was by far the more significant contributor to XP, sometimes by a significant factor over combat.

This approach to advancement is appealing in part because of its objectivity. The rules are clear about what earns XP and how much doing so nets them. Players know what kinds of activities will lead to advancement and this transparency encourages a particular style of play. Exploration, clever planning, risk management, and even negotiation (to avoid unnecessary fights) all emerge naturally when the primary goal is treasure not combat.

That said, this system is also clearly an artifact of game design rather than a simulation of anything. Despite attempts to explain it retroactively, there’s no in-world explanation for why recovering a chest of gold coins makes a thief better at climbing walls or a cleric suddenly able to cast a new level of spell. Advancement in D&D is largely a mechanical abstraction, divorced from the diegetic logic of the game world. Some players find this lack of in-setting justification jarring. Others, myself included, regard it as an acceptable (and often productive) mechanical contrivance.

Diegetic Advancement: The RuneQuest/BRP Model

A very different approach is found in games like RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, and other members of the Basic Role-Playing (BRP) family. Here, advancement is tied directly to what the character actually does during play. If a character successfully uses a skill, such as 1H Sword or Library Use, there’s a chance that skill will improve. The logic is intuitive: you get better at things by doing them.

This system is intensely diegetic. Improvement follows in-world logic and feels grounded in the character’s actual experiences. It avoids the abstraction of XP and provides a satisfying sense of verisimilitude. There's also something engaging about watching a character slowly improve in the areas he focuses on. Some characters become jacks-of-all-trades and others become specialists.

However, this comes at the cost of bookkeeping. Every skill use must be tracked and players must remember to mark those skills for later improvement rolls. In long-term play, this can become fiddly, particularly when characters have a large number of skills. It also risks encouraging behavior where players deliberately use low-probability skills just to have a chance at improving them, regardless of context.

Despite these quirks, BRP’s approach has had lasting influence, especially on games that prioritize character immersion and realism over abstract mechanics.

Narrative Advancement: The Milestone Model

The third common approach is often called “milestone” advancement. There are no experience points to tally nor skills to track. Instead, characters improve whenever the referee (or game system) deems that a “major” event has occurred, such as defeating a key antagonist, completing a quest, finishing an adventure, and so on.

This approach is most common in contemporary games, like Mörk Borg and its various spin-offs, though a versions of it exist even in current editions of D&D and Pathfinder. Its appeal lies in its flexibility and ease of use. It removes the need for careful tracking of treasure hoards or skill rolls and aligns character advancement with the narrative arc of a campaign.

However, it also introduces a great deal of subjectivity. What counts as a "milestone?" How long should characters go between them? Without clear guidance, milestone advancement can feel arbitrary and dependent more on the referee's whims than player action. It also risks undermining the sense of accomplishment that comes from overcoming difficult challenges. If advancement is inevitable, tied to narrative beats rather than earned through in-game actions, some players may feel less invested in their characters’ growth.

Moreover, milestone systems often flatten the pacing of advancement. In classic XP-based systems, players can level up at unpredictable times, sometimes quickly after a particularly lucrative dungeon crawl and, at other times, slowly, as they scrounge for minor treasures. That unevenness contributes to a feeling of dynamic progress. Milestone systems, by contrast, tend to regularize advancement, which some may appreciate but others may find dull.

Each of these advancement models brings with it certain strengths and certain limitations. The classic D&D approach encourages player choice and strategic planning at the cost of diegetic coherence. The BRP model is immersive and logical, but mechanically heavy. Milestone advancement is smooth and flexible but often lacks clarity and player-driven incentives. Designers and referees must both consider the kind of play they want to foster. Do they want a game that rewards careful play and tangible goals? One that simulates the experience of a character’s development? Or one that supports a tightly woven narrative with minimal overhead?

There are, of course, many other variations and hybrid approaches. Games like Pendragon offer their own takes on advancement, blending elements of these three models in novel ways. Other games, like classic Traveller, all but eschew mechanical advancement altogether. Nevertheless, these three remain, I think, the primary modes by which roleplaying games have handled the question of character growth.

As always, I am probably forgetting one (or more!) obvious examples of alternate approaches to advancement. If you know of a system that doesn’t fall easily into any of these categories or otherwise deviates from the scheme I've laid out here, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

A Plan Takes Shape

Elsewhere, I take a bit more about the Grognardia anthologies I've been pondering. If this is something that interests you, consider following the link below to share your thoughts. I'd appreciate that.

A Plan Takes Shape by James Maliszewski

Where Things Stand with the Grognardia Anthologies

Read on Substack

Retrospective: The Gauntlet

Released in 1984, module UK4, The Gauntlet concludes the two-part series begun in The Sentinel. Like much of TSR UK’s output, it blends folklore, moral nuance, and grounded fantasy with a strong sense of pacing and player choice. Written by Graeme Morris, The Gauntlet stands out for its attempt to transform the traditional gameplay of Dungeons & Dragons into something more focused on infiltration, diplomacy, and layered conflict than on brute-force dungeon crawling. By and large, it's successful.

At the heart of the adventure is the conflict between two ancient magical gloves: the Sentinel and the Gauntlet. Both were created long ago during a struggle for control over the Keep of Adlerweg, a key fortress in the contested region. The evil Gauntlet was forged to destroy the keep, prompting its defenders to create the Sentinel in opposition. Over time, both artifacts were lost and forgotten.

Recently, the Gauntlet has resurfaced, discovered by an ogrillon – the Fiend Folio strikes again! – who becomes enslaved to its malevolent will. Under its influence, he has taken control of Adlerweg and begun building a base of power. As part of a larger plan, the Gauntlet seeks to transfer itself to a more powerful wielder and has kidnapped the daughter of a local fire giant to that end.

The player characters enter the adventure as the bearers of the Sentinel, obtained either in the previous module (or through an alternate means in the event The Sentinel was not played). Drawn to Adlerweg to oppose the growing evil, the characters begin their journey with a detour to a village recently destroyed by gnolls. Though unconnected to the main storyline, the encounter emphasizes the region’s growing instability. A wounded gnoll chieftain offers incomplete and possibly misleading information about events at the keep.

However, the core of the module is the infiltration of the keep itself. A frontal assault is nigh impossible, but the Sentinel reveals a forgotten passage inside, now inhabited by giant ants and laced with traps. This portion of the module is open-ended and rewards stealth, planning, and creativity. The upper levels are occupied by gnolls, an ogre, and the aforementioned ogrillon. Morris provides strong guidance on enemy behavior and the keep’s defenses, making this portion of the scenario quite compelling. It's a nice change of pace from the usual dungeon delving.

Eventually, the keep is besieged, not by the Gauntlet’s forces, but by the furious fire giant and his army, seeking vengeance for his kidnapped daughter. The ogrillon, meanwhile, has hidden himself and the Gauntlet within a magical prison. The players must organize the keep’s defenses, rally any surviving allies, and survive the assault long enough to broker an uneasy peace. Though the attackers number nearly 200, this isn’t a battle meant to be won through force of arms. Instead, it’s a test of timing, survival, and negotiation. The climax involves penetrating the magical prison to confront the ogrillon and release the fire giant’s daughter. It's good stuff, especially for a module written in 1984.

The module's illustrations, once again by Peter Young, are not very good. They're slightly better than those in The Sentinel, but still amateurish in my opinion. Paul Ruiz's maps, however, are attractive and quite usable. Because of its layered structure and multiple factions, the adventure demands a confident and experienced DM, capable of managing them all. This isn’t a flaw so much as a barrier to entry. Like many of TSR UK's modules, The Gauntlet favors subtlety over spectacle. It possesses a quiet confidence and clarity of vision that sets it apart. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's probably the best TSR UK adventure and a fine example of how AD&D can support narrative depth without sacrificing challenge or player freedom.

Barrows & Borderlands

A reader recently pointed me toward Barrows & Borderlands, a charming OD&D-inspired game that began life over a decade ago as a high school 5e campaign. Since then, it’s evolved into something truly unique. I highly recommend following the link above to learn more, but I especially encourage you to watch the short video below featuring the game’s creator, Matthew Tapp. In it, he shares the story of how B&B came to be.

What makes the video particularly heartening (especially for old-timers like me) is that Matthew and his group are young players who discovered the pleasures of old-school play entirely on their own. I was also delighted to see the video was filmed at the Green Dragon, a game store in Charleston, South Carolina that I visited in my youth, where I bought my copy of the D&D Companion set (though it now seems to be in a different location).

If you’ve got a few minutes, give it a watch. It’s well worth your time.