[ Home : About : Worlds : Stories : Characters : Rules : Magic : Events : Join! ]
We started out as gamers with a taste for the unusual. Standard "sit down at a table roll dice and scibble on a piece of paper" gaming did not appeal. We also had a overabundance of history and theatre majors in our group. This potent mix of interests and inclinations led us to explore roleplaying as an improvisational exercise. We didn't need no stinking dice or charts or rule books! All we needed was interesting characters and a good idea for a setting. The gifted GM's in the group began creating worlds for us to frolic in which only required our imagination and the ability to do historical research (features we had in spades). Gaming in the fabric store, drama in the car on the way to faire, fight scenes on the DeAnza water fountain, and heathen dances performed around the Great Seal of California.
In one scenario, a magically charismatic nightclub singer acted as bait to catch a vampiric Nazi serial killer in a bizarre twist on the 1940's film noir style. In another, the evil minions of a dark force came to modern day earth to hunt down the last true born Jedi knight. The more dramatic and thrilling our stories became, the more we felt distaste at the encumberance of "character classes", "skill levels", and "saving throws". We threw out all the table-top roleplaying rule books. If an event in one of our stories needed a random element, hey, just choose a number between one and ten. Tah, dah. Improvisational roleplaying was born.
Vampire: The Masquerade was published by White Wolf games. I happened to be working at a game store at the time and got an advance copy...
Talk about cool!
V:TM was the first RPG that I'd run across that actually said ignore the rules if it's good for the story. Heh, this was definately for us. I ran a few Chronicles, we sat around being pretentious in our living rooms, quite soon the stories fizzled out due to feuding ex-es and less than dedicated players. I kept buying the supplements, the first few were inspired, then they started becoming enthralled with their own technicalities (a clan of three-eyed vampires was the limit, thank you). It became another "My character is a *** generation *** with a level *** in the *** discipline and *** dice in my *** stat" monstrosity.
Alas, the rules mongers had gotten hold of it and made it their own. Sigh.
Yes, I did still indulge in orgies of geekdom (you never loose your roots, ya know). Amid the unwashed wargamers and fat girls in chainmail bikinis I noticed an interesting thing... a group of gamers wearing capes and swords would duck into a stairwell and huddle around an un-caped geek with a clipboard. They would shuffle papers and roll dice, then the group would move on.
Upon closer observance, and from a few covert questions, I learned that they were playing a "live action roleplaying game".
Yeah, right, sure you are.
I investigated further, found another group of "live action gamers" and joined a game. That evening 20 gamers spent 4 hours in a 12X10 hotel room learning to attain their goals on their own personal merits. Without Charisma scores. Without skill rolls. Without NPCs or GM descriptions of 10X10 foot stone corridors. The concepts were still crude and the story cliche, but the idea had potential. I was hooked. And soon, our entire group would be.
I pitched my vision of a live action version of a vampire game to the group. Character creation for the first Bloodbeat Chronicle began.
After three great years the group imploded due to personality conflicts, but the game went on. I gathered up my rules system, a few loyal friends, and off we went to the gaming cons. My first experience with running LARP at cons was strange and rewarding, but it wasn't really my cup of tea. I prefer on-going stories, complex relationships and characters with history together. Soon with recruits from the con games the troupe blossomed once more.
I got a job as a web developer. The Pandemonium website was born.
In the intervening years we ran and played numerous games; big all-weekend LARPs, ongoing RPG campaigns, one-shot LARPs, adventure RPGs with rotating GM's, etc, etc. We had lots of fun and created some pretty amazing and unique stories and characters.
I returned to running games at conventions to find the LARP scene greatly altered. There is now a stigma against vampire games, and I don't have a "following" as a GM because I haven't run a con game in the last 10 years. Sigh. Our troupe is up to the challenge. We will grow and prosper. We will run cool games and everyone will love them. (And if they don't then we'll use their mangled corpses as props for our murder mystery parties.)
Web Weaving by Argante D.H. © 1997-2005
Content Development by Argante D.H. © 1992-2005
Comments? Questions? Burnt Offerings?