Vampire Gamers
     (RPGer's)
Vampire Gamers (RPGer's) The popularity of the role-playing game Vampire:the Masquerade has created an entire subculture of people devoted to the game, its universe, and the personae they create in order to "live" the game. These individuals have their own network of interconnected websites, chatrooms and messageboards, and enjoy posting to these "in persona" as their gaming characters. As such, they maintain the illusion that they are "real vampires" as defined by the rules of the game and the fictional qualities, history and supernatural abilities accruing to their game persona. Like good actors, they hate to "break character" and explain what is going on, so their statements and dialogue online can be confusing to those who stumble into one of their fora without knowing where they are or being familiar with the game. Some gamers and their supporters argue that the game serves a healthy purpose in allowing them to work out certain issues and to experiment with certain possibilities and potentials. It has been suggested that some gamers may actually be HLV's or vampiric people who have not yet confronted their nature, and are using the game to "try out" the idea of being a vampire and see how it feels. Other gamers are also Vampyre Lifestylers who take the ideals of the vampiric universe in the game seriously and attempt to manifest them in real life. Unfortunately, many of those in the vampiric community feel that some gamers deliberately mislead and deceive HLV's, and true seekers of vampiric reality, by pretending to be what they are not. Some HLV's fear that by presenting themselves online as "real vampires" who claim to be centuries old predators, the gamers make living vampires look like mere role-players themselves, or create the impression that HLV's also claim, or believe themselves to be, bloodthirsty hunters of humankind or world-weary immortals with supernatural powers. For HLV's, the gamers confuse the issue of what true living vampires are, and makes it more difficult for them to find each other via such media as vampersonal ad listings or messageboards. This is the reason that the majority of ads listed by HLV's or seekers looking for living vampires strictly specify that role-playing gamers not reply to the ad in persona. It's difficult to be certain whether some role-playing gamers deliberately tease and mislead HLV's, or whether they simply don't take vampiric people seriously enough to believe that the people running the ads aren't just role-playing, too. Arguments could be made for both propositions. For the present, however, gamers are a contentious topic in the vampiric community, frequently denounced, and then defended by those vampiric people who enjoy playing the game and feel that gamers are unfairly stereotyped. As the vampiric community becomes more confident and more clearly defined, possibly these two groups will be better able to establish their boundaries and their degree of overlap, and come to a more comfortable mode de vive.