The Success of Dungeons & Dragons Paves Way For This Gothic TTRPG

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brought forth a successful tabletop role-playing game adaptation. This wasn’t thought possible by fans and filmmakers for decades, similar to how video game adaptations were poorly received. However, video games have been receiving successful adaptations repeatedly for several years now, so Honor Among Thieves might be the beginning of a new trend. Time will tell.

However, filmmakers should strike while the iron is hot. Paramount hasn’t announced a sequel or spin-off to Honor Among Thieves yet, but other studios should start looking for their own IP to adapt. While fans’ enthusiasm for Marvel projects is cooling, it’s time to bring something new to theaters that will excite fans, like 2009’s Iron Man. It’s the best time for Vampire: The Masquerade to make its big screen debut because even those not already familiar with it, it will attract a wide variety of people.

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What is Vampire: The Masquerade

There are a great many different tabletop role-playing games on the market, but none are quite as unique as White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade series. White Wolf Publishing created the game in 1991 and offered players a different roleplaying experience. It was an ambitious project that branched out beyond the table and became only one part of the world the company created. Now, players can enjoy the roleplaying aspect of Vampire with Bloodlines and the upcoming Bloodlines 2. Or they can experience the different powers a vampire uses in combat with Bloodhunt. For those most interested in the stories, there was even a long series of books that highlighted individual characters from each of the 13 clans.

Just like in Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop players get to create a character, in this case, a vampire, and run through a campaign led by a storyteller. While fighting other monsters is a component of the game, Vampire: The Masquerade focuses more on the politics of vampiric society and keeping up with the “Masquerade.” The 13 different clans that dictate a vampire’s abilities within the World of Darkness as well as a number of different philosophies a vampire can follow.

The very clan a player chooses may dictate how they get along with other characters within their game, but no other aspect of the game will have a bigger impact on that than their character’s philosophy. There are those who believe it’s absolutely vital to uphold the Masquerade, the struggle of keeping the supernatural world a secret to humans, while another sect wants nothing more than to tear it down and rule over mortals. Then, there are those who fall somewhere in between on this philosophical spectrum. These opposing beliefs sometimes lead to open conflict, but it also involves backroom deals that storytellers can have fun with.

While Dungeons & Dragons promises adventure for its players, Vampire: The Masquerade doesn’t even promise a player’s character will survive to the end of their first game session. It’s a cutthroat system where even a player’s allies can’t be fully trusted because everybody, no matter their character’s philosophy, is trying to come out on top. If anything, the system is a look inward at the most selfish behaviors of humanity.

Vampire: The Masquerade Can Succeed Where the Dark Universe Failed

Universal Studios saw the success of a shared cinematic universe with the MCU and decided to create its own. They called it the Dark Universe, and it was going to throw the studio’s slate of classic monsters into the same universe. Dr. Jekyll, Frankenstein’s monster, the Invisible Man, and the Mummy were already cast and ready to go. Unfortunately, Tom Cruise’s The Mummy failed to bring in positive numbers that would support the creation of such a universe, so the studio scrapped the entire plan. Besides its own little corner in the upcoming Universal Epic Universe theme park, the Dark Universe hasn’t seen the light of day.

White Wolf, or rather its parent company Paradox Entertainment, not only has a loyal fanbase who would love nothing more than a movie or television adaptation of Vampire: The Masquerade, but it also has a bevy of other role-paying games that take place within the World of Darkness. The World of Darkness is a mirror universe of the real world, except it is significantly darker. There are many a thing that go bump in the night there.

Other World of Darkness Properties

VTM makes up only a third of the most played games in the World of Darkness. The vampires are known rivals to werewolves from Werewolf: The Apocalypse and “wizards” from Mage: The Ascension. Where vampires worry about the politics of their society and primarily live in major metropolitan areas, the werewolves are more spiritual and concerned with protecting the planet from spiritual corruption, which the vampires embody. Mages, on the other hand, mostly work toward the betterment of humanity.

Each of these properties comes with its own antagonists, but they crossover just as easily, making them prime real estate for a cinematic adaptation. There are a number of other games within the World of Darkness, such as Hunter: The Reckoning and Demon: The Fallen, giving filmmakers plenty of material to pick from. It even has a mummy game.

The Underworld series of movies was the closest audiences got to seeing vampires and werewolves interact with each other on the big screen. A World of Darkness cinematic universe would give a more in-depth look at such a world and provide better reasoning for the different supernatural entities to be enemies than “because we don’t like you.”

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