The 1st Edition of Vampire: The Masquerade was supposed to be “a storytelling game of personal horror.” That was literally the entire back cover text, except for a quote from Günter Dorn‘s Das Ungeheuer Darin (a fictional work). Early in the book, Mark Rein*Hagen writes:
This storytelling game provides a way to experience a terror of an all too immediate nature, for it allows you to experience the horror from the other side of the mirror. The horror of Vampire is the curse of what it is like to be half-beast and half-angel, trapped in a world of no absolutes, where morality is chosen, not ordained. The horror of Vampire is the stirrings of the Beast within and the cravings for warm blood. Perhaps the greatest risk of playing Vampire is seeing yourself in the mirror. To play this game, you must bear witness to the madness within you, that which you strive to master and overcome, that which you cannot bear to face.
Why, then, in actual practice did the game so often manifest as “katanas & trenchcoats” — a style of play that others have described as “superheroes with fangs”?
This shift in focus seemed to happen despite the best intentions: Vampire players were all about the “personal horror” and “it’s an immersive storytelling experience, not a combat simulator” selling points of the game. They strongly self-identified with those values. And yet their games would somehow still often end up being katanas & trenchcoats.
In some cases, of course, this style of escapism was simply more appealing to the players; the vampire as a cool and enigmatic avatar was more fun than the vampire as a form of self-reflection on the nihilism of morality and the fragility of humanity. But if this were the fundamental issue — that the appeal of escapism will necessarily override an RPG’s intended style of play — then you would expect to see this be more or less universally true.
And it isn’t.
Take, for example, Call of Cthulhu. Here is another popular, widely played horror game which emphasizes a shift away from the D&D-style “combat simulator,” featuring characters whose humanity and sense of identity is steadily eroded by their exposure to cosmic, uncaring, inhuman truths. But even in the case of Pulp Cthulhu, which deliberately seeks to blend that style of play with a sort of Indiana Jones savoir-faire, it still appears to be passingly rare for “shotguns vs. Cthulhu” gameplay to emerge.
Why?
Well, there are a number of factors that probably contribute. But the title of this essay probably gives away the fact that I think it largely boils down to the game structures (or lack of those structures) supporting the desired style of play in both Vampire and Call of Cthulhu. Because, as I’ve noted in the past, players gravitate towards structure.
It’s easy to simplify this down to, “Call of Cthulhu has a Sanity mechanic!” And then people say, “But Vampire had a Humanity mechanic!” But this is, in fact, an over-simplification because it fails to look at the game structures that were built around those core mechanics.
HUMANITY vs. SANITY
At first glance, Humanity and Sanity seem similar: Both are numerical meters. Over time, characters lose them. When the meter runs out, the character is permanently “broken” in a way compatible with the overriding theme of horror in each game and can no longer be played as a PC.
In the case of Vampire, however, although a small grab bag of mechanics were based on the character’s current Humanity score, virtually no structures were built around the loss of Humanity. The Degeneration mechanic (which didn’t even have a name in 1st Edition) was something that the GM was supposed to trigger more or less by fiat when the PCs took certain types of actions.
Superficially, this once again appears identical to Call of Cthulhu‘s Sanity mechanic. Here, too, the GM is supposed to trigger a sanity roll whenever a certain condition is met during play. So what’s the difference?
Look at all the game structures in Call of Cthulhu built around the Sanity mechanic: Every creature you face triggers a Sanity check. Virtually every grimoire of forbidden knowledge you read triggers a Sanity check. And the game also has a very specific default scenario hook which is, “Go investigate strange creatures and grimoires of forbidden knowledge.”
So basically everything in Call of Cthulhu is built around the Sanity mechanic. By contrast, Humanity is just off in a corner twiddling its thumbs.
Furthermore, as you lose Sanity in Call of Cthulhu you become more likely to fail your sanity tests. It’s a path of accelerating decay that ends in madness. Vampire, on the other hand, utilized a “hierarchy of sin”:
- Humanity 10: accidental wrongdoing
- Humanity 9: any sort of purposeful wrongdoing
- Humanity 8: shoplifting
- Humanity 7: theft and robbery
- Humanity 6: unintentional killing
- Humanity 5: wanton destruction
- Humanity 4: causing injury and personal harm
- Humanity 3: sadism and perversion
- Humanity 2: murder
- Humanity 1: the most heinous and demented acts
If your Humanity has already fallen below the point where a particular type of act is considered a “sin,” then you no longer have to make checks for it. The system is literally designed to plateau your character at a Humanity score equivalent to whatever style of play you prefer and then stop calling for Degeneration checks.
So not only was the system not supported by structures that would make it a central pillar of play, it was actually structurally designed to remove itself from play entirely.
And that’s why Call of Cthulhu remains focused on its existential horror and Vampire… doesn’t. It’s not designed to.
